Reunion

• After the name-tag squinting and the quick refills
• of Chablis, after the introductions, the recognitions —
• eighteen-year-old faces peering out from behind
• time’s compromises in the flesh — after the big-
• bosomed hugs, the handshakes, the celebratory
• speeches (only the reasonably self-satisfied
• attend these things),
• I wander out onto the campus quad wondering…
• looking for why I’d come — the grass, the great
• shade trees just as I’d remembered, light lingering
• in the evening sky, loamy fragrances of late May
• rising from my footsteps — exactly the kind of .
• insidious spring I remember running
• away with me each year.
• No wonder I find her seated there on the steps
• of Boylan Hall between classes — it was always
• between classes in May — and the boy sprawled
• beside her is the boy she’d been flirting with
• the better part of freshman year.
• When she looks up from her lap to meet
• his gaze, she notices how his hair curls
• over the rim of his fisherman’s cap,
• and the impulse to reach over and touch
• a small strand springing up just above his
• left ear is so intense, it prickles in my
• fingertips fifty years later.

Jacqueline Kudler is a teacher of memoir writing and literature at the College of Marin in Kentfield, California. Her poems have appeared in numerous literary reviews and anthologies. Kudler was awarded the Marin Arts Council Board Award in 2005 and the Marin Poetry Center Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010. She lives in Sausalito, California. “Reunion” is from her second book, Easing into Dark, published by Sixteen Rivers Press, and is reprinted by permission. Author’s photo by Mary Ann Pacula.