The Drop Out Conclusion

A poem addressed to fellow dropouts, asking what becomes of a generation when duty catches up with age and the families raised in retreat must confront the work that can only be done systematically.

A short retrospective reckoning by and for those who opted out. The opening questions - 'What will be done with us I thought / When duty hits its mark with our age' and 'What will we do with ourselves / When the fancy of a perception / runs into wisdom' - mark the exact hinge where youthful vision collides with the arithmetic of getting older. The answer arrives as collective knowledge rather than confession: 'We all know now my friends / from the families we raised in retreat' and, after a gap, 'And the work we could only accomplish systematically' 'Retreat' is the poem's pivot, naming dropping out as both withdrawal and refuge, and the final admission - that the work was only ever done 'systematically,' by method rather than by inspiration - is the hardest thing the counterculture can concede about itself.