Sestina #2

I still can't track down the scrap of paper with a sestina stanza on it.  I was on the train the other day and wrote out two stanzas for a second sestina.  I hope to wrap this up this week.

While I often recall a fairly placid childhood, almost ideal,
when I probe deeper I recall fights.
I was always a bit contrary, particularly through college;
I did little to hide my scorn for organized religion
and above all Reagan, with Reagan-worship common among our neighbors,
and yet at the time I wondered why I wasn't more popular.

Indeed, I was not very popular, but I was not a total pariah.
I had a few friends, though even this situation was not ideal,
for these were fragile friendships,
based not on proximity, for none of my friends were next-door neighbors,
but more on a shared perspective that comes from being an outsider.
We papered over our differences, since we implicitly understood our bonds would not survive much testing,
let alone any knock-down fights.
By high school I had learned to hold my tongue around them (most of the time) on the subject of religion.
Still, I have seen none of them, nor contacted any, since I left for college.

In college, I did come into my own and found several groups that I fit into.
I think it would still be a stretch to call myself "popular," but I didn't feel like such a freak.
Speaking of freaks, religion claimed the mind of one of my early friends -- David -- who had seemed so normal
when I re-encountered him after a span of many years.
He seemed to have an ideal life
and a great family life (with games that I only could play at his house)
-- though I've learned the grass is almost always greener in the next door neighbor's yard.

In any case, we weren't strictly-speaking neighbors either in elementary school or high school when we reconnected
(after they moved to the 'burbs for the better schools and the college-prep courses).
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