It’s very strange, she said,
All these people going into the past tense.
Yes, I said, and when I look around
to see the people I knew,
it’s their children who are at the ages I remember

So many people we knew once,
but don’t recognize  –
it doesn’t feel like the march of time
so much as having suddenly
passed through a curtain,
being on the other side
continually surprised
to find myself here

Generations slide together.
Grandchildren occupy the place
where children were.
Children move into the full and swift passage
where time doesn’t seem to move –
careers are built, own children raised,
unexpected lurches
send lives on different courses

And we come together here.
The formerly absolute gates
of inclusion and exclusion
are gone,
their specter just a shadow
I can step over …

We all are drenched
in the moment’s richness,
the layered colors of foreshortened time.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 10, 2023