College at 44

You ask if it makes me feel old

-

My vague dis-happiness, walking on campus. It doesn't make me feel old

Just no longer young.

I'm fine in class

-

!

I enjoy talking with classmates on either side. The lectures and conversations are stimulating. It's just when I'm walking across campus — I try to put my finger on it.

Why -

I've walked and thought and walked

A

I think it's my lost chances, still ahead for those around me.

The deep sadness for a young girl dead.

A young girl doing what was expected,

And isn't expected any more.

Who can understand what it was like 25 years ago?

-Ellie King

Grandmother

Golden rays of late afternoon

streamed through the window

as white fairy-tailed dust danced in its light,

then came to rest

upon the silhouetted figure

of my grandmother.

Wrinkles on her face

like an old oak

that had been felled

to expose the rings of many seasons gone by.

Her eyes as much a portal

to the future

as a storyteller of the past.

The small bent frame portrays a silent beauty of gold, red, and brown

splashed on trees

by a painter's brush

one Autumn afternoon.

-laura arabian 12/77

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Photo by Laura Arabian

Transcendence

Time-touched withering flower was meant only for a brief hour. Sinews standing with a careless grace linger not, but will suddenly. And soon will not be filling up my crystal vase.

But far away my precious hopes I hoard

in ascending tiers of stone.

Like ziggurats or pyramids, ponderous, heaped upon the scorching sands.

And long afterwards wind-seared vestiges, they still stand upon

the desert waste so deep

of unfulfilled desire.

Memorials to my heart's dream's lofty towers.

And yet, crystal hours like spring

showers are soon gone.

With them soon will go my dreams,

swept away.

Drifting like the river's water.

For these I have little sorrow

for soon

More dream-drenched moments

will appear.

Tomorrow like dew-drops on a misty morning

Magic mirroring parcels of time

will be mine.

Somehow the same and somehow

always fresh

From their magic new hopes will I borrow.

Photo by Janet Century

Now empty the vase stands ready and time's eddy,

Delivers me a new bunch of flowers.

Time! Time! Time! And its crystal hours.

Within its shimmering halls, within its fragrant bowers, everything withers, And is reborn, transformed.

-Theresa Paulfranz

Mortal

The young never die and I was young. Therefore, I did not understand of my own death, Nor, proud in my unique dying did I perceive The tree and the leaf falling or the falling sun.

I did not believe how all beauty is one Solemn requiem for life. But love now

You have murdered me and I hear God breathing

Through this earth in which I lie.

And dying, I vision death so young and limbed Like the innocence I never believed. Love

You have murdered me and now I who can never die Shall wear death upon my flesh as fair as youth And grow old impatiently with such human grace.

-mg

Photo by M. B. Camp

J

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February, 1980/What She Wants/Page 9