Sir

"Sir, can you help me?"

Asked the lovely girl

Young and sinewy

My type

In my day

Today?

.

A side trip to reminisce

Just a few years ago

When I was a student, too, like her

Thinking her thoughts

Having her fun

Reveling her parties

.

Student Union Bookstore

She thought I worked there!

She thought I was a grown-up

The one you turn to

When you're a generation away

Indeed! Not yet for me

.

In another time

In my day

I'd make my play

To impress her, make her laugh

Initiate a rapport that promised more

I wrote a silent script

For her, with me, and all her friends

At play

.

It was indeed another time

A time that'd passed me by

She was no more taken with me

Than anyone else responsible

I had disembarked from the dock

That ship had sailed

I was eclipsed by the horizon

Toward which I had moved a world

Away

.

As we age we add layers

And I'd added mine

The one where I was a player

Was buried deep in time

I was leaving a wake

Although I was asleep

The fleet behind me

Was a layer away

.

In my day I was it

The one, to be, to see, to play

The world was defined by me

And I and mine defined the world

The ones who were, whom I saw, and who stayed

Up with me

.

The layer from mattering to the next you make

Is the most sobering, sad, and poignant

When you realize you've handed off a baton

To the ones who now are, who are seen, who play

But see you in the rearview

As someone quaint, historic, otherworldly

As any previous generation appears

You might as well be a ghost

.

If you refuse, rebel, and try to stay

Back with the new who have come now to play

You're a clown or a letch or a fool

To those you clutch at absurdly

And you won't hear it even though

They'll laugh, but not out loud

.

Act your age and the sailing is smooth

And know that some who are, the ones to be

Won't always be the players who stay

But follow you while they play the fools themselves

It's a legacy of future shock

.

You just learned it before them

So don't laugh

Except at yourself and

Take a joke

For the joke's on you