Black and White Photograph c. 1969
by MFrost Delaney

At Graduation, Still A Child

When hopes and dreams abound, when innocence still waits
for understanding teenage dances, weekend dates,
for freedom from the isolation of the woods,
a family house set back, the promise of some coulds:
I could escape, I could forget it all, the hates.

My mother liked the smiling pose. A beam creates
illusion–discontentment with one’s life abates.
But I was serious, rejecting all the shoulds.

                When hopes and dreams abound,

Is when the locked doors of a life unlock, the gates
to freedom open to an unknown world that waits
for me as I try to forget my childhood’s
lack of tears, envision all the wanted goods
my heart, in all its years alone, imaginates,

                When hopes and dreams abound.


 

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