Double fluke

This is a revision/repost of a 2024 February Poetry Adventure poem (day 6). Prompt: "Evergreen." I have a hard time recognizing people if they change their hairstyles (or age sixteen years).

One of my kids’ school worksheets from last year. Poem first posted here.

The February Poetry adventure is hosted by

Petra Hernandez

. Come join the fun!

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When I was twenty-two, I moved to the Evergreen State
where the green confused my eyes, mixed so much 
with the gray. Either way, so homesick.

One day, trudging down the Ave, wishing for a friend
the way parched leaves wish for water
I saw a man from my hometown 
moving towards me.

He had been a sapling when I saw him last:
a neighbor frenemy, playing Laser Tag
running among the yellow weeds.
Middle school, high school, not really close
but bound together by a small town.

Four years and eight hundred thirty-two miles later
we walked down the same street again, re-meeting.
I was so happy for five minutes of being known.

Sixteen years later, pushing a red cart in a parking lot
(a little worn by babies, hair piled in perpetual bun)
someone said my name. I blinked, blinked
spinning my memory's kaleidoscope 

until the same boy—then graduate student,
now man rooted deep into his thirties—snapped 
into one person. No longer a sapling 
but an oak barked over, limbs broken 
and re-grown, branches stretching wide
with children of his own. 

In another twenty years, I may meet him once more
walking towards each other in Wallingford
me recognizing him or him recognizing me: 
old neighbors, old classmates, old frenemies
older now than we’ve ever been
passing once again.