The
Dream
Vortex
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Back in High School Chorus
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Let me grow lovely, growing old—
So many fine things do:
Laces, and ivory, and gold,
And silks need not be new;
I went and got this poem stuck in my head last night whilst puttering about the filing cabinets, paying bills and shifting last year's files out of the Current Year folder. The poem has been set to music, and I once knew the Alto part; the arrangement in SSA we sang one year in the New Orleans District Honor Chorale. I've still got the tape somewhere. The tune, as best I remembered it, was stuck in my head.
And there is healing in old trees,
Old streets a glamour hold;
I dreamt I was back in my High School chorus, and we were singing this. Not just the girls, either - my whole class was there. G-- was on my left, and he never was in chorus with me. I never could quite get my chair in line with everyone else's – as I scooted forward, the folks on either side of me also scooted forward and kept me crowded out. I felt horrible, because I knew I didn't remember my part well, and I was surely singing the wrong notes into my neighbors' ears. But they wouldn't let me scoot forward so that I could hear what they were singing.
Why may not I, as well as these,
Grow lovely, growing old?
- Karle Wilson Baker
