Flashback

This was my favorite poem in high school. I keep it tucked away in a mental pocket, along with Jabberwocky, a couple of Ogden Nashes, and a few random stanzas of Robert Frost (hats off to fourth grade). Whose woods these are, etc.

I could chalk it up to adolescent angst—and truly, one of the things that makes me happiest is that I never have to go to high school again—but now and then I dig it out, and it still resonates.

a total stranger one black day
knocked living the hell out of me—

who found forgiveness hard because
my(as it happened)self he was

—but now that fiend and i are such
immortal friends the other's each

(e.e. cummings)