An Elegy, in Loving Memory of Camp Lanterns

It’s not like riding a bike

This memory can rust

I can’t even remember

How to fire one up

When we were kids the memory was etched on on our hands

Parmanent ink

But 20 years later

I am alone and where the others are,

I do not know

The instructions are gone

I can’t read them because my palms are too worn

Too calloused

All my skin cells are new

And all these grown up cells, they are heavy with grownup thoughts

The old thoughts,

The kid thoughts,

They were good thoughts

But now they are dusty,

And they are grey with mold

Like mud-drenched antiques on the side of the road

Lighting a gas lantern?

That’s from a past life

There must have been a pump,

For fuel

There must have been a valve,

For the flow

I think they ran on white gas

Kerosene?

I no longer know

But I remember how good the light smelled

And I remember the sound of it in the air

When those old Coleman’s burned they hissed and breathed

Like living things

We’d play euchre:

Huddled

Our backs to the dark,

Our fingers shuffled

Cards, under that brilliant glow

The game was fun

But the rules are like the lamp,

Dim,

One slight nudge away from

Forgotten

I think

We had to use matches to light the cards on fire,

Ah

No—

We had to use matches to light the mantles

Then we used the lantern and the cards to light the night on fire

Each campout was pure adventure

Boyish jokes

Joy and laughter

An escape from the mounting pressures

Of growing up!

But the escape could never last

At the end of each week, we’d pack up our bags

And head back to school

And finally

From there:

Each our separate ways

I went towards one manner of life

The kind that is

Of broken homes

And of scars

I don’t know where my friends went

But I hope they faired better

Than I

But how can I hope

When there are things I know?

For instance:

I know the stress of growing is made small by the stress of being grown

The troubles of the teenage mind— crushes and pranks and dreams—

Are nothing

To the troubles of poverty, pain, loneliness, and despair

There are dark nights

That come from exhaustion and solitude

I hope my friends fared better than I

In keeping their hopes alive—

That their nights are not dreamless!

What I really mean:

I hope they found some way to not care

The way we all could,

Back when we’d break the lantern glass

And watch the moths swarm and flare in their bright, instant, searing deaths—

We’d watch them with the fire in our eyes

As they’d crash against the wide open, white hot, bright-lit mantles

And

We would brush their little, singed corpses

Off of our

Guiltless game of cards

…

Back when nobody could distinguish

Between innocence and ignorance