A Reminiscence for the Class of '71 Alumni
on the Occasion of Our 55th Year Reunion
Davidson College
June 6, 2026
Act 1 – Schrödinger’s Capsules
On December 1, 1969
They were pale blue and hollow
as a politician's promise of peace,
deadly as punji stakes in hidden pits
that riddled the paths in Vietnam.
These plastic capsules were armed with slips
that bore all the birthdays of draft-age men.
And so it would go – the course of our lives
decided by lottery. Better odds,
we supposed, than surviving the rapture.
Gallows humor masked the angst
as networks aired the Special Report
sponsored by Quantas and Kool Cigarettes.
Do you recall that damnable hand
sifting the bin for its first victim?
Who could breathe as implacable fate
grasped a capsule and pulled out the slip.
For a dreadful second, all our birthdays
quivered in superposition
that settled on a single date
when read into reality:
September 14 ...
I heard a curse from a nearby dorm.
April 24 ...
A buddy muttered and slammed the door.
December 30 ...
Someone slumped in their seat.
I was breathing easy when they came for me.
The future had smiled on the foresight
to be born number 343.
Act 2 – Stayin' Alive
On the 70s
None of us would die in 'Nam
as we scattered through the 70s
bearing our anthems and ideals.
Neither could survive unscathed –
ideals evolve and music moves on.
The times they kept a'changing.
We were the early Boomers
who grew up with Doo-Wop,
and gleaned ideals from Dylan;
who swayed to soul
and shagged to the Tams
in pavilions by the sea;
who grooved to the Byrds,
rocked to the Stones,
and tripped with Jimi Hendrix;
who booked a seat on the Mystery Tour
then hitched a Magic Carpet Ride
and flew the Dark Side of the Moon;
who yearned for the freedom of Bobby McGee
and the reckless abandon of Janis
wailing a song of longing and loss.
We whose souls were Born to be Wild
were soothed by Judy Blue Eyes
and saw ourselves as stardust.
We who had gone to Scarborough Fair
and found the wisdom to Let It Be
learned to relax with a natural high.
We lived to see our music neutered,
herded into Oldies pens
and trotted out to serve nostalgia.
We saw the best songs of our generation
shoved aside by the machine beats
and peacock posers preening
in discotheque dance halls.
Oh we have a right to resent disco,
we have our reasons to grieve.
Act 3 – Mourning in America
On the 80s through the 00's
It could not have been dodged,
that restless night in the early aughts
when jolted awake in the wee hours
the time came for accounting.
Was it morning in America
when we loosened our youthful ideals
and launched the prime of our lives?
Who even bothered to bat an eye
when those who had thrilled to Thoreau
and thought they bore Ulysses' soul
began to resemble Telemachus
subdued by the duties that rule our lives?
We took the well-trod adult path
pursuing the usual professions
wielding white shirts and conservative ties.
As we clawed our way through the 80s
we cradled babies, watched over toddlers,
traded coupes for minivans,
drove our youths to soccer camps,
then dropped them off at freshman dorms ...
Now into the silence that swept our lives
an emptiness entered as well,
that uneasy stillness that fills a day
and whispers unbidden thought:
It's time to weigh the world we wrought
against the world we dreamed could be,
to pray with the ache of desperation
and mourn again for America.
Act 4 – Okay Boomer
On the teens and 20s
They were subtle at first, the signs,
the moments that may have meant little,
the brief encounters that culminate
in the bittersweet conviction. Oh
don't bother denying what the world
surely knows – you and I are old.
We're as far from the fall of Saigon
as we freshmen were from Verdun.
Now the sons of Viet Cong
host our vets in swank hotels
and the grandsons of saboteurs
lead tourists through insurgent tunnels.
The world that birthed us long since passed
and now the days that shaped us fade.
Though we became what we could be
the future breathes –Recede! Recede!
We see it in that sidelong glance,
the furtive wink, a solemn nod
as the teenage geek suppresses a smirk
fixing our frozen phone (again!).
We see it in the sullen clerk
who rolls her eyes and taps her nails
as we rummage through our wallets
then fumble on our phones to pay,
We see it in the kindly mum
yielding her seat on the subway,
and we see it in that saintly nurse
with her sweetly-patronizing smile,
or in most any Waffle House
in the way a waitress calls us hun.
Our sons and daughters smile and sigh
as we shuffle down the hallway
(recalling a kiss, a son's first steps,
a daughter's laugh, our father's death)
only to enter the kitchen (again!)
wondering what we came to get.
But we are the sum of all that we were
in our cursed and blessed years on Earth.
We bought the right to roam eight decades
and happily inhabit them all.
Act 5 – And Are We Yet Alive?
On the present time until
It always remains unwritten,
a page left intentionally blank,
an exercise assigned to survivors
to see again through youthful eyes
the ever-fresh beginning
of a world that is always becoming.
Friends, our final act is improv.
Until the moving hand moves on
what will you write with the rest of your lives?
