When The World Was Young By Will Duchon


Thinking back, back, back...feeling the warmth, the breeze gently blowing on his 
face...They are enveloped by the night, warm, dark but for the moon peering 
behind lazily ebbing clouds; yellowish and bright, shedding only the light 
needed to see her as they move through the tall grass of the park under the 
April night. Warm, so warm, the moist air stroking them; slight murmur of 
crickets amidst the caress of dogwood and cypress branches that sway, swirl, in 
a slow dance with the tenderness of the wind; rustling, and then not; silence 
for a moment, then again the leaves, recently born, yet old as life itself, 
joining with the night air that is Spring. And they are here...looking back he 
thinks of the course of events that combined to place them together on that 
particular night; unthinkable, unimaginable; what had to occur for her to be by 
his side, for her hand to be joined with his that night of his seventeenth 
year...but these thoughts he pushes away; these calculations are for a much 
later time; for a time when the rarity of those moments has long faded into that 
realm of memory that he now ignores; that realm he dares visit when life becomes 
too ordinary, too regular; when life is not life at all. No, not now...too much 
thinking...because he is back, back, and she is there with him, and this night 
exists...no intrusion, no sighs of forethought, of consequence to cast its 
dulling numbness over them now.

Her scent is fresh, her eyes are deep; a depth that only their youth knows. The 
warmth of the air; the swelling sounds of the night become them, and they become 
the night...they are at one with it all. They sit under the old, old embrace of 
the dogwood; (how many lovers has this tree born witness to? It does not matter; 
it is only her and him, and only this night that has always been). Her hand is 
warm and gentle in his, and his warm in hers. Taking in that first kiss of their 
youth....and then within a yearning urges to know, to know, to know....tonight 
and for all of their days...the softness, the warmth that is her lips; tender, 
open and questioning, but at once knowing...and only then, after releasing; 
after that very first letting go, seeing her, only then does life begin to 
imperceptibly move them apart, apart, and further.

Tonight he looks back, reaches into the years, into himself, for that night, 
that Spring when love was granted in a flood of sensation and hushed 
color...back, back...He reaches out for it once again and longs for a new 
awakening.