Your Sunday Poem

The Old Age of Nostalgia

Those hours given over to basking in
the glow of an imagined future, of be-
ing carried away in streams of promise
by a love or a passion so strong that one
felt altered forever and convinced that
the smallest particle of the surround-
ing world was charged with a purpose of
impossible grandeur; ah yes, and one
would look up into the trees and be
thrilled by the wind-loosened river of
pale gold foliage cascading down and
by the high melodious singing of count-
less birds; those moments, so many and
so long ago, still come back, but briefly,
like fireflies in the perfumed heat of a
summer night.   

-- Mark Strand