In Careless Love, the second part of his brilliant two-volume biography of Elvis Presley, Peter Guralnick writes that by the end of Elvis' life, his audience loved him not for what he was but for what he sought to be. That is a difficult grace to bestow on celebrities, whose public lives are about nothing so much as maintaining an image. It is even harder to bestow on those around us. If there is one statement that literally applies to every member of the human race, it is that each of us has a vision of ourselves that we try constantly to live up to. Some of us may be less flamboyant than others, but a performance of some kind is inevitably taking place -- even if we don’t expect applause, and even if the only audience (or critic) is ourselves.
 
Take a moment to sketch a self-portrait. It can be an imaginary one; you don’t need an actual pen or paper. Perhaps you’re starting with your job, paid or otherwise. You are a firefighter, and your picture shows a strapping, resilient person who bolts to action when the alarm sounds but finds a way to stay methodical under pressure. A politician: You are charismatic, caring, the one who takes action while others dither. An artist: You entertain, challenge, and impress with inspiration. A preschool teacher: Your voice soothes at the right moments and herds cats at others. Note that some of the people described above might be considered “selfless” more than others. Yes, the world is full of people who put on a show of modesty. However subconsciously, that is still putting on a show. Being us can be a demanding task, especially when we sense that others depend on us to do it.
 
“Young Father,” my poem featured this week in the Journal of Radical Wonder, is about a man who is having a tough day being himself. The poem is not about any real person, but no doubt you can identify with it on some level. Perhaps you’ve failed to summon the wit that you typically muster at dinner parties or to perfectly keep track of every work email you received this week. The failure is the same thing at bottom: You feel that you’ve disappointed yourself, and others, and maybe God as well. Possibly a media image gets worked in there somewhere as well. The main character of “Young Father” may at some point have immersed himself in Atticus Finch, or someone Tom Hanks played in a movie, or any other Hollywood conception of an ideal man of the house. He is not that man right now, and he is unsure of his relation to the house as well.

An argument has just flared between him and his young son. He has slammed the front door and stormed outside, where he takes a moment to size himself up. Is there more than one ideal? Yes, and that may be a consolation. He is not poised or cool, but with his work clothes and stubbly chin, he appears fearsome and rugged (the neighbors' daughter, who watches him from a wading pool, provides a ready judging panel). Still, he acknowledges his helplessness -- both to control his temper and also to keep the house intact. Something else is keeping the house, plus the other houses lining the block, whole and standing. Some construction team worked it out, used the right materials and proportioned the weights correctly. The best that the poem's hero can say for himself is that his door slam didn't undo their efforts.

It is the woman who protects the house. She stays calm, holds their son to ease his nerves, sends the subliminal message that rage is not permitted. Am I delving into gender stereotypes here? Was I doing so when I wrote this poem a decade ago? Perhaps. "Young Father" is about specific characters, and a reader can take it as universal or not. For that matter, it is about a specific moment. If this fiery man could stick with the reader longer, he would show different sides soon enough. The next time his son leaves a toy on the kitchen tiles, he might defuse the situation with humor or a gentle reminder. His wife might nod with approval, the house standing as resiliently as both of them wish. The audience is always there. Elvis knew that. After so many muckraking biographies, we still hail him for the times when he got it right.

My newest poem in the Journal of Radical Wonder is "Spectator at the Balloon Launch, 1783," another piece from my manuscript in progress. Flight and innovation are recurring themes throughout the collection, and this one is based on the first hot air balloon voyage, for which scientists sent a sheep, a duck, and a rooster into the air over Versailles, France. As brave as humans can be, we sometimes let another species test the air for us.

Here are two other recent noteworthy pieces in the Journal:

I have read many ekphrastic poems (those inspired by visual art) over the years, but Robbi Nester did a unique twist with "The Missing Sense," which imagines the contents of a missing painting by Rembrandt. In 1624-25, the artist created five paintings that each depict one of the senses, and the fifth one (taste) has since disappeared. There is not even a written description of what it shows, so Robbi paints a scene of her own. An elderly patient grimaces at soup, while a small child gnaws on bread: "I share his pleasure, / savoring the thought that an artifact of the imagination / could reach us through the senses, make us dream." Check your attic for Rembrandt's actual painting, but I will accept Robbi's vision in the meantime.

John Brantingham, the magazine's co-editor, posted a short but profound essay titled "Ambling," in which he opens up about a recently diagnosed heart condition and how it's forced him to adjust his lifestyle, whether by embracing vegan food or simply by slowing down and no longer pretending to be 20 years old. Long ago, Emily Dickinson wrote about how Death was kind to stop for her and relieve her of her responsibilities. In a similar vein, John writes here, "I think about what a blessing it is to have a heart defect and to listen to its message." Feel better, John. May you have many years of ambling ahead.

Today is Jan. 2, and 2024 has begun. This is the first official day. New Year's Day is a warmup -- a blank page, a pause for planning and reflection, a day off school for everyone and off work for many. Now, all the holidays are over, and we get back to business. We may also get around to new business, although that can be notoriously hard. At 6 a.m. on Jan. 1, I got an email from Medium.com proclaiming that over 80% of people abandon New Year's resolutions within the first months of the year and posting a series of links to articles about how to stay on the wagon. In any case, if we've made plans to do things differently in the new year, Jan. 2 is probably the time to begin. This is when we see what the year is really made of.

As I noted the other day, I am not inclined to be political on this blog, even as the year concludes. Biden, Trump, inflation, climate change, Ukraine and Gaza -- any number of pundits for major news outlets can comment on them more astutely than I can. Perhaps 2024 will be as chaotic and bewildering as some of them have predicted, perhaps not. There is still a firm line between the personal and political, however blurred that line may often seem in modern times. So I can say without hesitation that, whatever trepidatious headline may top CNN right now, I am looking forward to 2024. I always look forward to a new year. The Christmas decorations can go back into their boxes for 11 more months, and other festivities can wait. I am excited to be productive again. I have learned to do a job and maintain a home well enough that I don't mind keeping that momentum going. There may be new adventures and surprising revelations along the way as well. A new year is a question mark, and Socrates, of course, believed that true wisdom began with questions.

Of course, a return to business isn't all about mystery. It's also about knowing some definite truths. Today, the Journal of Radical Wonder posted the third poem in my unintended New Year's trilogy -- unintended because they were written years apart and not meant as a continuing story. "Day After New Year's," which first appeared in the collection Angels in Seven in 2016, is about the party officially ending, although I don't view it as a sad poem so much as an honest one. A man who lives in a gated complex feels responsible for his neighbors' safety and casts a stern look at a group of boys who loiter near a woman's garage. They hustle away, and then, a moment later, the man himself becomes the target of suspicion; he's stared too long at a pair of girls who are playing with Legos on their front lawn. The girls race to the door and talk to a shadow that probably belongs to a parent. The man speedwalks away and takes note of the holiday remnants around him: "wreaths left out / for recycling, extensions, unplugged Santas." Personal boundaries solidify again. The new year has arrived, and it feels distinctly like the old one.

Unless any of the world events mentioned above severely disrupts our way of life -- and history has definitely shown that that can happen -- 2024 will probably feel mostly like 2023. We will take the usual precautions and draw the usual lines between generosity and safety. We will flourish optimism over the usual things and temper it when necessary. For that matter, some of us (roughly 20%, according to Medium) may genuinely stick with our resolutions and treat the year as the outrageous gift that it is. We always have the power to be extraordinary. Sometimes, being ordinary is achievement enough. That's how we'll make it to 2025.

Yesterday, the Journal of Radical Wonder posted "Desert Highway, New Year's Eve," one of the bleaker poems in my catalog. I have never ended a year on as despairing a note as the poem's lead character does, but I know that others have. Still, every dark night is followed by a new beginning. That is the cycle that we go through every day, and the new year makes it more decided.

So today's poem -- part of an unintentional trinity, written at different times but set on consecutive days -- takes place on New Year's Day itself. It describes a day years ago (2016, I think; that's when the poem was first published) when my wife and I drove to Laguna Beach to enjoy the sea breeze and the spectacle of unaffordable homes. The poem is not about New Year's resolutions, or really even the lack of them, but simply about gratitude for the nice things in life and acceptance of the things that we can't change. That is the feeling that I have now as I write these words, and the feeling that I have had more or less on every New Year's Day in the past. The start of January is a pause and an intake of breath. Given the prognostications over the last week ("What strange things does 2024 have in store?" a Washington Post headline rhetorically asked), perhaps a deep breath is what we all need.

"To Rachanee, Laguna Beach, Jan. 1" is a love poem. I have always struggled at writing those, perhaps because I get too practical-minded when writing about romance. My inner Pablo Neruda gets cantankerous. Perhaps this poem made it to completion because it's about practical-minded love. I have seldom felt more sincere as a poet than when I wrote:

     We are one day — always a day, not a year — 
     closer to broken, our bodies counting
     toward an end whose only secret is time and place.
     If we are lucky, someday, we will plan our letting go,
     but this year is marked for holding what we can.

I love you, Rachanee. Let's hold as much as we can.

Note: ​When I blogged about "Elegy for a Rhythm Guitarist" last May, I mentioned that the poem first appeared in the Sonora High School literary magazine in 1998. The advisor of that magazine was Marilyn Middleton, who also served as our 12th-grade English teacher, student body advisor, philosophy teacher, prom organizer, and probably several other capacities that I'm forgetting. Ms. Middleton (as she will always be to me) was a genuine force at Sonora High, and on Dec. 29, we received the news that she had passed away at the age of 84.

Tributes are piling up for her online, as befits any teacher who dedicated decades of her life to helping and inspiring young people. I will remember her for her toughness, her warmth, her brilliance as a teacher (among the works she guided us through were Oedipus Rex, Othello, Death of a Salesman, Heart of Darkness, and Chronicle of a Death Foretold) and her support of a young poet who was probably more nervous than she realized. Twenty-six years ago, I was a senior in high school and anticipating what we would learn in her class over the six months to come. That was a good way to start a year.

Jonathan Gottschall, in The Storytelling Animal, writes that humans process life through stories. That may explain why I love years. By that, I am not talking about the events of any particular year -- though I am thankful to say that I have never had an entirely bad one -- but the concept of years themselves. They are not stories, but we gladly treat them as though they are. Magazines reserve their final issues to write about trends and identify the most significant people. Statistics take on a new resonance. Award groups begin compiling lists of contenders, and critics finalize top-ten lists. (When I was a teenager, awaiting Owen Gleiberman's favorite-movies list in Entertainment Weekly was a secular ritual of sorts.) Again, there's quite a bit of contrivance -- wishful thinking, really -- in pretending that a sequence of events that began on Jan. 1 reaches some kind of resolution on Dec. 31. From March 25 this year to March 25 next year will cover a 12-month period too. But it's tidier to align those bookends with the actual beginning and end of the calendar, and part of being a storytelling animal, after all, is imposing order on chaos.

Or, think of it this way: Even if we're not ready for the new year, the new year is ready for us. Grand statements are in order, and those can be fun. In my last newsletter to the sixth grade, I started with a quotation from Van Morrison's song "One Irish Rover," which doesn't actually mention dates but has been known to resonate over my classroom speakers in December:

     Tell me the story now,
     now that it's over.
     Wrap it in glory
     for one Irish rover.
     Tell me you're wiser now;
     tell me you're older...

The story (let's just call it that) of 2023 is over, and I will let the pundits of the world wax philosophical about it. For the purposes of this space, I will simply thank John Brantingham, Jane Edberg, and the rest of the staff of the Journal of Radical Wonder for providing a wonderful platform -- not just for me, but for all the other poets, essayists, critics, fiction-writers, and artists who contribute to its scroll on a weekly basis. Through the Journal, I have made new friends, reconnected with old ones, lined up guest speakers for my classroom, and in general relished the act of creation, which is our greatest antidote to despair. I also commend the magazine for giving me the incentive to revive this blog, which had sat dormant for nearly four years before the Sunday poetry feature began in March. Most of the poems published in Radical Wonder have been old ones, but just blogging about them has awakened me to how I've grown as a writer and thinker. It is nice to have a voice.

As the weeks neared Dec. 31, I mulled over which poem I would use to cap off the year. The easy choice was "Desert Highway, New Year's Eve," especially given that New Year's Eve falls on a Sunday this year. Then, I realized that the poem had a pair of sequels; in my catalog of poems, I have one that is set on Jan. 1 and one on Jan. 2. The three poems were not intended as a series and originally appeared in different books, but they work as a sequence when put in order, at least for me. I asked John if he would be up for publishing all three poems on their respective dates, and he gave the go-ahead. So today's poem will be the first of a trilogy, to be followed tomorrow by "To Rachanee, Laguna Beach, Jan. 1" and Tuesday by "Day After New Year's."

Starting with the first poem, then: "Desert Highway, New Year's Eve" dates back to 2010 and grew out of a single line that I jotted years ago on a bus ride in England. It was late in the day, and the fading colors outside the window gave the trees a damp, congealing look. I grabbed a scrap of paper and scribbled the words "The earth grows tighter in the bleeding dusk," and a variation on that line later made its way into the poem. "Desert Highway" is not about that bus ride, but rather about two fictional characters who stop to view the sunset on a less-than-harmonious drive. The man feels that he has let the woman down, and as he lies in bed later, he fantasizes about her being the only person left on Earth, savoring the wonders of creation with no meddling partner in her way. Scientists predict that the world will end in 7.59 billion years. The poem's protagonist imagines it ending tonight. On New Year's Eve, we sometimes think in those hyperboles.

Last week on this blog, I wrote about the poem "Bonfire at Cape Cod with Marge Piercy's Workshop," which raises the question of which papers we burn and which we keep. One page that belongs to the second category is a piece of recycled paper tucked in a plastic container in my bedroom. This page contains the first and only draft of my poem "December," which I wrote in the Mesa Court cafeteria at UC Irvine on Oct. 16, 2001 -- I know the date because it's scrawled at the top of the paper. (Back then, I typically dated my first drafts in case that information would be of later interest to historians; you really can't fault English majors for thinking in those terms.) It's rare that I remember the actual act of writing a poem, but I know for a fact that I wrote "December" in about 45 seconds in between bites of dinner; I literally had a fork in one hand and a pen in the other. The original copy has one revision, as I initially wrote the last line as "in a strong pair of hands," then crossed that out and wrote "in your hands" instead. The other lines seemed to work, so I scribbled a title at the top ("December," even though it was the middle of October) and pocketed the pen again. That's what my right hand was doing, anyway. I can't remember what entree I was spearing with my left hand.

In the years since that buffet-fueled moment of inspiration, "December" has become probably the most popular poem I have ever written. It is not my personal favorite, as fond as I am of it. (I don't have an official favorite, but a short list of contenders would include "Segue," "Ride Home," "Alaska Airlines Nonstop to LAX," "One Word," "Blues Man," and a handful of others.) Still, writing is about communication, and "December" has communicated with a great many people. The Poetry Foundation features it on its website, and thanks to that platform over the years, I have had undergraduates email me questions about it, seen it posted on blogs, and even discovered it being used by artists in other mediums. A few years ago, someone created an animated video featuring the poem as narration, and a short story on a Marvel Comics fan-fiction site used it as the internal romantic thoughts of a superhero. (When I checked this morning for the video and fan-fiction story, both were not to be found on Google. If you are among the people behind those efforts and are reading this blog right now, please put them back up.) It was not a poem that I thought about much at the time, even while others went through months or years of gestation. But the simple truth is that the reader receives the poem, not the process. "December" may take about as long to read as it did to write, but those 67 words seem to have struck a reverberating note.

What is that note, exactly? I have stated before on this blog that, after a certain amount of time, my old poems begin to feel like the work of a different person. Sometimes that leaves me feeling critical of them, other times just intrigued. "December" intrigues me. I remember my undergraduate days well enough to say that nothing really "inspired" this poem in the traditional sense of the word. The poem is addressed to a "you," but there was no specific person for whom it was intended. It involves cars (riding, not driving in one), and I had indeed gotten a new car in August of that year, but I was filled with enthusiasm to drive it; I had no conscious urge to surrender the keys to someone else. Like all spontaneous poems, it was sparked by a feeling. Perhaps it was a feeling that I had then, or one that I remembered, or one that I imagined that I might have someday. If art is timeless, then it obviously can wait for the right occasion. So I will do my best to play poetry analyst (or psychologist) right now and determine what that occasion is.

The doctor is in, so let's start with the opening lines. I want to be a passenger / in your car again -- I think the last word must be the key one. The imaginary person here is not a new acquaintance, and the speaker clearly views him or her as a respite. ...and shut my eyes / while you sit at the wheel / awake and assured / in your own private world -- this is love, maybe, but not romantic love, at least not in the traditional sense. The speaker fantasizes about being with the other person, but in his fantasy, his own eyes are shut and the other person is immersed in a private world. The speaker loves this person not for charm or affection, but specifically for his or her driving skills. (Yes, I know the poem can be read metaphorically, but I am putting my 22-year-old self on the spot by taking it at face value.) ...down a long stretch / of empty highway / without any other / faces in sight -- this is an odd image, really, since we usually ponder road safety more when other cars are around us. Of course, single-car accidents happen as well. Perhaps there's a steep ditch by the side of the road.

All of that is one sentence. "December" consists of just two. The final four lines are partly a repeat of the opening: I want to be a passenger / in your car again / and put my life back / in your hands. The passive voice, a passive activity, and once more, there are those words "back" and "again." When I wrote "December," I was nearing the end of my undergraduate studies. I already had a graduate school in mind for the year after. Was I subconsciously pining for a time when I didn't have as many responsibilities? Perhaps I had just had a long day of study and was relaxing in the cafeteria. Perhaps the "you" was an imaginary hero, the kind of idealistic fantasy that all humans, not just poets, summon from time to time. (If you study the lyrics of the Beatles' "I Will," it appears that Paul McCartney is rhapsodizing about his love for a woman who may exist only in his mind.) In any case, there is a great deal of reality in the poem as well; I have certainly had many rides that ended without incident. I have put my life in many people's hands, and gotten lucky.

"December" appears this week in the Journal of Radical Wonder. I am proud of its longevity. In the spirit of the season, I have reserved it for the day before Christmas. A common question that I get about the poem (at least in emails from students who are writing essays about it) is what the title means. Again, it was the first word that came to my mind. I guess it means that we relinquish control at the end of the year, or at least try to. Workplaces take time off. School lets out. We build bonfires for the year behind us and make resolutions for the one ahead. For that matter, we spend a lot of time on the road. As the holidays begin this week, drive safely, all of you. Or, at least, take a ride with someone who does.

Another year is ending, and I have thrown out a lot. That is a pessimistic sentence to open a piece, so let me provide context. I have written a lot this year, as I do in any year. I am a writer in many mediums: poems, blog entries, emails, texts, report cards, post-it notes, grocery lists. It comes naturally to me in a way that singing, dancing, playing sports, and deciphering the stock market do not. Today, I am not even sure how many things I wrote; it's Christmastime, after all, and I must add cards and gift tags to the list above. Many of those pieces of writing were given to others, and I likely will not see them again. Among those that I kept for myself, most will end up in the trash or recycling bin. The days are long past -- so much so that I don't remember them -- when it was astonishing for me to string a series of letters together into a word, or words into a sentence. I take the act of writing for granted now. And that means that the percentage of pieces that I will keep is small, maybe more so with time.

What is the criteria, exactly? In his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King declares that writing is a form of telepathy -- a mundane form of magic in which a writer spirits his or her thoughts into a reader's mind. That's not a bad comparison; writing, after all, is one half of a conversation, the equivalent of the proverbial tree falling in the forest and waiting for someone to hear it. A lot of trees fall unheard, just as a lot of personal notes, emails, and even poems and stories disappear into the wastebasket unmourned. If I consider a piece "kept" (and I may not be the only judge of that), it is because I feel that it communicates with someone. That someone may be another person -- I like to think that my poems and blog entries are being read by a set of eyes somewhere right now, although I frankly have no idea. Then again, the audience may simply be me -- I doubt that anyone else is going to rummage through my bedroom drawer and leaf through the high school newspapers that I've preserved. Any piece of writing lives or dies depending on whether someone cares about it. Case in point: Emily Dickinson's poems, which today comprise one of the most influential bodies of work in Western literature, survived because the author -- who published almost none of them in her lifetime -- opted to keep them safe in her bedroom.

Then, of course, others kept them safe. The world kept Dickinson and threw away countless other authors; their words simply stopped speaking to people. So perhaps it's perversely fitting that one of my most vivid memories of the longest poetry workshop I have ever attended is the night when we burned a bunch of papers. In summer 2015, I was invited to join Marge Piercy's annual workshop in Cape Cod, and on the final night, we gathered on the beach and started a bonfire. Our kindling was a stack of copies of the community newspaper, the Cape Cod Times, and I frankly am not sure why we had it; perhaps some local grocery store had unloaded the last week's edition on one of our hosts. But it burned, as all paper does, and I found myself looking bemused at the front page as we wadded up each copy and tossed it on the fire. We didn't value the Cape Cod Times, or at least those copies of that issue of it, as anything more than fodder for warmth. Did anyone else value it at all? At some point, someone had; no writing can exist unless someone finds it important at the moment of creation. Even a post-it cries out to exist for a second or two. Most often, that cry turns out to be short.

I used to work at a paper like the Cape Cod Times. It was called the Pictorial Gazette, headquartered in the coastal town of Old Saybrook, Connecticut, and I covered four small towns there from March 2004 to February 2005. The paper no longer exists, and there is scant mention of it online; an article in another small Connecticut paper, the Middletown Press, tells me that it went out of business in 2008. Perhaps some library around Old Saybrook has an archive of all the Pictorial Gazette's issues; I have not made calls to investigate. When I started working there, it was my first full-time reporting job -- my first full-time job, period -- and I diligently saved three copies of every issue once it hit the newsstands. Now, I may have one or two single copies tucked away somewhere. For all practical purposes, history is done with the Pictorial Gazette. I don't really mind. The articles and columns that I wrote for it were nice, but they weren't the best things I've ever written. Probably, they served as practice for the better pieces I wrote later for the Los Angeles Times, maybe for this blog as well. Sometimes, the purpose of writing is to build up to something grander. I'm sure I could tease a kindling metaphor out of that if I wanted to.

What have you kept? If you've read this blog entry up until now, then you muyst be a literary person of some kind. Perhaps you're a writer, whatever your medium may be. In some private (or even very public) place, you have a canon of the pieces that spring cleanings and delete keys have spared. It's not just a matter of tidiness; it's one of the ways that we curate our lives. A few years ago, I did a curation of my own, assembling 50 poems from over two decades into Tea and Subtitles: Selected Poems 1999-2019, which Moon Tide Press generously published. If a massive bonfire devoured my house and I had time to save one creative artifact, I would grab that book. It represents the work that I'm proudest of (at least for now; ask me again in 20 years), with all the false starts and failed experiments eliminated. Among the poems that made the cut is "Bonfire at Cape Cod with Marge Piercy's Workshop," which was inspired by the beach gathering mentioned above and appears this week in the Journal of Radical Wonder. Like all of my poems, it started life on a sheet of paper. I obviously didn't burn it. I have dispensed with others over the years, but perhaps that's a way of staying warm.

My poem this week in the Journal of Radical Wonder is "On Transit," another piece from my manuscript in progress. This one was written in Honolulu this year (in a hotel, an airport, and possibly a plane) and is about the sensation of multiple kinds of travel. I hope you enjoy it.

Here are two other recent pieces worthy of note in Radical Wonder:

Nolcha Fox's poem "Blurred" is a short, evocative list of questions in which the author seeks comparisons for herself -- a bit in the vein of Simon and Garfunkel's song "El Condor Pasa (If I Could)." Here, rather than a hammer, nail, forest, and street, we have an antelope, an eagle, fences, and a myriad of natural forces. The closing couplet, "Where does the body end / and the plains begin?", is quite lovely.

Dave Alcock, who has regaled Radical Wonder with some brilliant flash fiction, recently contributed a poem, "Broken," which paints the kind of short, pithy vignette typical of his prose. The use of short sentences here ("Her eyes glistened. She sighed on the sofa. She held her knees. Her legs wouldn’t stand.") is particularly effective. Thanks, Nolcha and Dave, for sharing your work.

As I've grown older, I have become aware of three phenomena: fewer things seem tragic, more things seem funny, and fewer things feel like endings. Today's case in point is "The Ones Who Disappeared," a poem that I wrote a decade ago and offered this week for the Journal of Radical Wonder. I was immensely proud of this poem when I wrote it and still like it very much, but I no longer read it quite the same way as I did ten years ago. Back then, I thought it was quite possibly the saddest poem that I had ever written -- even the most depressing, which is a word that I hesitate to use. Now, I am not so sure. Yes, it is about people who do not live up to the traditional formula for success, and from the poem's perspective, they may have disappeared into a shadowy no-man's-land. But the poem has only one perspective, and a limited one. I have lived long enough to realize that there are more tunnels than I once acknowledged, and more lights at the end of them.

Perhaps you recall those people from the first year or two of high school. I am saying that, of course, under the assumption that ​you graduated and went on to college -- certainly the poem adopts the attitude of such a person. You entered ninth grade with a grab bag of classmates, some congregating in honors classes and on a trajectory toward a four-year university, maybe even a scholarship. Most of you stuck together for the next four years, pleasing the right grownups and making the memories typically expected of teenagers. Those were the people that you graduated alongside, the ones who wound up on your Facebook page and attended the reunions. And then, years later, you thought back on those first couple of years and realized that the cast of characters had diminished along the way. On the margins of your memories, you spotted the peers who stopped showing up at some point: the shy, the antisocial, the eccentric, the immature. They were the ones who washed out, who for whatever reason didn't finish high school. Or, at least: didn't finish your high school. Did they transfer somewhere else? Did they abandon their education completely? You never heard the true story, and very likely never asked. They were the ones who disappeared.

​Certainly, the poem takes it as a disappearance. Those peculiar classmates become an unsettling novelty for those who outlasted them; they are "conjured in asides" years later and remembered for their quirks and shortcomings: "the limp and the saved candy wrappers, / the closed guitar case and the tattered biography / leafed through each morning at the back of the gym." Those specifics are made up, but I knew many people early in high school who had similar oddities. For years, I thought of them as lost. What could their lives have amounted to if they didn't follow the path that I adhered to carefully, the one that I took for granted as the equation for success? For those of a certain middle-class persuasion, there is a fearful template for a safe and prosperous life: accolades in high school followed by acceptance to college, followed in turn by the job market and a comfortable home, all the while accompanied by a stocked refrigerator and a steadily running car. Below that brightly lit path is a shadowy world of precarious living, even if we can't say for sure what is in the shadows. It must constitute failure of some kind. "The Ones Who Disappeared" ends with a question that I intended as rhetorical at the time: "Was the road they escaped on bolder and brighter, / a better deal than for those who stayed?" At the time, my answer to that question was: of course not. Now that I have seen and understood more, I would refrain from answering the question at all.

​Perhaps their path was bolder. Perhaps it was brighter. Quentin Tarantino, who has won two Oscars for screenwriting, dropped out of high school and honed his craft by working in a video store. One of my best friends in graduate school lived on the streets in Germany as a teenager after storming out on her family; she now holds a prestigious university job in Canada. I have known thriving people who were once alcoholics, battered girlfriends, dropouts, gang members. They all survived. Did their former classmates ever wonder what happened to them? No doubt. But their early mistakes (and even later ones after that) were not the end. The world can be spectacularly cruel and spectacularly accommodating; I have met only a few people who couldn't find a footing of some kind. High school is one opportunity to find it. College is another. But some people endure through on-the-job training, through night school, through connections, through carefully honed street smarts, through the simple process of falling and pulling oneself up. "Failure liberates you," the journalist Samuel G. Freedman once wrote. Disappearance, under the right circumstances, can be another word for liberation.

I have been to one high school reunion. It was ten years after graduation, and I met the people I expected: the classmates from my walk of life, who had gone into law, medicine, academia, and, in one case, professional poker-playing. We had a fun and predictable time. None of the classmates who left after the first two years attended. I don't blame them; they had continued their journeys elsewhere. What if I met them today, after so many years? If I recognized them, I would ask for their stories. They might ask for mine, and we might astonish one another. And if they requested a sample of my writing, I might show them "The Ones Who Disappeared" and ask them to fill in the blanks.