Classmates Poem by Shalom Freedman

CLASSMATES/ WHAT HAS BECOME OF THEM?

Classmates
What has become of them?
I click and try to find out
Sometimes I see the image of a pudgy aged face
And there is an instant sadness
At one in my mind still
As I knew them in their youth-

Sometimes I learn a story
Most often with the usual litany of ailments and deaths
However proud in achievement at certain moment

The sadness of life gone
Of youth which we all had
And did not know how to keep
The sadness that it has gone by for all of us-

I click and wonder and am a bit guilty
At my own small spying-

I know about them
Do they care enough to see my aged face again?
Are they sad too knowing
how older and fuller
and greyer and whiter
I look?