POETRY

Yesterday — A Poem

On the trick of time and aging

Image by Author. ©Shari Lopatin, 2023. All Rights Reserved.

It feels like only yesterday
When my feet slipped into ballet shoes
And I wrote about
New crushes
Every three days
In my spiral notebook with letters
From magazines spelling my name,
And J.T.T.

We all feared Y2K
And the collapse of humanity
From a virus that’s not COVID
But threatened to wipe our
Memories.

I walk into my backyard
And find my friend
Who died
Before twenty-one in the sky
And wonder if she can crawl
Through time
Like the hiking trip I took
In Oregon near the creek
When I was only
Twenty-four.

How quickly might tomorrow go
And become the breath
Of yesterday.
I watch my hair flow
From blonde to brown,
Then quietly fade
To the gray.