ON BEING WILLIE

No one of us wanted to be Lohman
Mostly we just swore we never would
But here we are all sixty and so suddenly
We’re the old guys in the cul de sac like Willie
With the young ones that are living all around us now
Viewing us as all the old folks in the neighborhood by most
And I’m not sure how that occurred but I known that our neighbor is a kid

We all ran off to the CYO to hear the latest twang
I know for sure than everybody there thought just the same
We thought we’d live forever and be always younger than the folks
And it felt that way for some time while we were stomping Bristle not the old
Raised kids when they were still small and we still looked the part of youngest old
And somehow missed the age of thirty maybe we ignored it all the same
We did look in the mirror checking just to prove we hadn’t changed

But anyway I had a chance to visit Death of Willie Lohman once again
Why our school felt fifteen year old sophomores should read such a thing.
I think they did it so, when we got old, we could recall our time in school
And read it once again at sixty so it made more sense and taught us what intended
So I did and unexpectedly it seems like I have never read or heard of it before in youth
A story I could not recall and yet I know I read it as my old book still is marked
I even passed the test I think because they asked us what on each page

I should have checked the title then I would have caught of who it was about
Who it was that this short tale was all about but sixty-year old men
How goofy was it that I thought the story was about the son
About the sidekick Biff as if he was the reason for the book
I never even understood the story was about the dad
His sudden end of what was trying to be life
In this imagined land of ours be as such
A special mark upon the face of earth
But gone as quickly as he came
With little but a memory.