MORE AND MORE my kids are going through my old school yearbooks and asking what life was like when I was in high school - back when Paul McCartney was in that "other group" before Wings and Kennedy was calling the shots.
"What did you do in the high school war, Daddy?" is what they ask."Listen, my children," I tell them, "back then the war was in Vietnam, not in the high school halls. And most of us in Brigham City were wide-eyed lambs at play in the fields of the Lord."
Language like that is enough to make them gag, of course.
But the truth is, it was true.
I was a poet in high school. That is, I was my own idea of what a poet was - a version of Percy Bysshe Shelley.
And my best friend, Rugger, was John Keats.
We were 16, yet we talked in slow, low tones like Dylan Thomas. And after school we'd wander the thickets of Mantua, humming and hymning, drinking in nature and getting drunk on metaphor.
Russell Baker once said he grew up talking the way people talked in the movies. But Rugger and I didn't. We grew up talking like Longfellow.
"I revel in darkling, dappled things," Rug would say.
"You mean like thrushes?" I'd say, and we'd chuckle at the little joke.
Rug wrote lofty, earnest poems that sounded like the rolling waters of the Logan River. I penned short lyrics about pain and wandering. And we both wrote deep poems of longing for the girls in our lives.
Rug was Dante, writing to his perfect Beatrice - an athletic girl in my neighborhood who had exceptional teeth. I was Don Quixote praising my dark and lovely Dulcinea - who I called "E" in my poems.
And when it came to romantic notions of romance, Rugger could write rings around me. He once thought of a color for every letter of the alphabet (avocado for "A," burgundy for "B") then spent the evening imagining his girlfriend walking the meadows in a gown of each color.
The best I could do was concoct nicknames. There was the girl I called "The Daisy," another I called "The Butterfly." And there was "E," of course, who I labeled "The Forest" because - like Frost's woods - she was lovely, dark and deep . . . the most mysterious woman I'd ever known. (She was all of 15 and wore braces.)
But the world was what we chose it to be, then. It was a perfect, poetic world that - in its way - was also unreal, unjust and more than a little self-congratulatory.
But looking back at it now, I stillsee the wonder and magic - even more wondrous when compared with world my children have now - a world of fears that so-and-so is smoking cloves, or that some other kid might commit suicide. A world where you go in twos when you go out at night.
It's a dry-eyed place to live now. But, to be honest, the years have wiped the dew from the eyes of Rug and me as well. He has 10 kids and works in education administration. He's kept the soul of a poet - though today poetry has to wait in line behind the dirty diapers, committee meetings and performance evaluations.
As for me, I stopped writing poems with words like "taciturn" in them years ago. When I get time to write what I want these days I do pop journalism for magazines that pay well.
In short, like William Blake, the world has moved from "Songs of Innocence" to "Songs of Experience."
And, frankly, I think that will eventually be for the best.
But if you're reading this, Rugger, I have to say I still think about those days when a fierce sunset could change the way we lived our lives and a schoolgirl's wink left mortal wounds. We were "princes of apple towns," "honored among foxes." Yes, we were also naive and a bit silly. We never saw that each day was a step closer to the grave. Now we do. But, as Dylan Thomas kept trying to teach us, for a time, Rugger, you and I were green and golden. We sang in our chains, like the sea.