The Old Camera (A Tribute to Mike Rossert)

The Old Camera
(A tribute to old times)

Sometimes I feel
(looking at that old picture
from that old camera—back in ‘58)
feel I’m still that eleven-year old boy
in Como Park (St. Paul, Minnesota)
standing in the sun
with my pal, Mike Rossert
(like Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer)
smiling—proud as can be
(over nothing)) just life))
arm around his shoulder
(his around mine)) now 59)).
I suppose there wasn’t a care in the world
(just loose time, romping time—).
That old camera (1840s)
caught it all:
life was so simple
it was a ball…!

#1632 1-29-2007

Note: Dedicated to Mike Rossert. Mike and I roamed St. Paul as kids, between 1956, perhaps to 1959; but we remained friends until I was perhaps 15-years old, then we both lost track of each other. He was perhaps my first real friend, I mean, one I spent any quality time with. We’d roam the banks of the Mississippi River, and wake up the bombs in the caves thereabouts. We run and explore the tunnels under the streets of St. Paul, Minnesota, that went from the Capitol to the Historical Society, and to other such places. And to the top of the hill where the museum used to be, and of course out to Como Park; we’d also run in and out of the elevators downtown, like clowns. I think he was more daring than I but it was—nonetheless, unforgettable times, times that are worth looking to back; thus, it is prudent I do believe, to let ones kids explore the wonders of youth, it is only around for a clap of an eye, than lost to oblivion, unless you can capture it, in a poem.