Forward to The Past or Back to The Future

Forward To the Past
or
Back to the Future Reversed

  Some may be apt to say,
“What was the name of our senior play?”
Those of sound memory reply,
 “Our Hearts Were Young and Gay.”

 And that we were… back then.
Surely you agree and when,
you stop to think; it comes to mind
that now it’s a past long left behind.

Back then we had no idea what “now” would be,
all the things that have become of you and me.

But the Play told a story of looking back
when white was white and black was black.

We did not swim in a sea of gray

It was a time to dream and a time to play.

 So, here we gather round, and talk drifts back
to a simpler time, with right and wrong still intact.

And some may wonder where we went wrong
forgetting our dreams and losing our song.
But it has always been this way,
this looking back, on an earlier day.

 Others may feel with false sense of pride
that they’ve done well, this 50 year ride.
But in the end, what does it mean,
all these years gone between?

Clothed not, we started the same,
only made different by our name.

 And so too we’ll share a common end
where what we did or might intend
counts for naught and is measured in
who we could count as our friend.

 John Mullinax 2007