Familiar Places Poem by gershon hepner

Try to find the people whom
you knew when you grew up and dared,
before you lost the youthful bloom
that you and all those people shared.
You can not, for they like you
have left the places that were so
familiar, changing for the new
the old lamps that no longer glow.
Like our friends familiar places
sadly can’t be recognized,
for though we try to touch the bases
they become as etherized
as patients lying on a table
in the wastelands we don’t know,
and while we may think that we’re able
to recreate the cameo
that made the past as perfect as
a picture hanging on a wall,
we can’t bring back the world of was
from where it lies, beyond recall.


4/11/01