class eighteen

Neo-Hippies


Driving home, you put the Dead
on, relishing their simple greatness.
I’m passively gazing out my window
at weary fields and clumsy cows
that pastured places just like these
some thirty years before us. Looking
out at them, I almost see
us back in 1965–
and wonder if anything
has really changed from then to now.

Retrieving lighter and blown glass bowl,
you pinch your plant apart and pack
the weed with awkward fingers, carefully
light it, sliding low into
your seat, evading window’s gaping
view. You inhale slowly, and
the scent of marijuana and
the slightest tinge of body odor
flood my nose and I can’t help
but think your dreaded hair is so
appropriate; your tie-dyed shirt
is just a plea to have been born
in other times. You start to giggle;
my mind wanders. Would you still
have been this way if you were there
just as it was–without the glory,
fashion, image, everything
that makes it cool–Would you still

have fought against the war, or gone
to football games instead, always
thinking of the boy your mom
brought you up to be? Would you
still have taken pride in passing
up the meat she may have served,
or would your fifties upbringing
have made you long for breakfast bacon,
lunchtime deli, dinner steaks?

Coming back, I see that you’re
still grinning. Maybe we’re all trying
to escape this place, and maybe
you’d be just as counter-culture
then as now or eighty years
before. I think it doesn’t matter
where we are–or when–but that
we’re here, and trying. At least there’s that.