We had the best of it, he says, raising his glass,

As if in some salute to the past.

We meet on occasion, as old school friends do,

Remembering when we used to drink under-age.

Well past that stage now, our sense of

Boyhood bonhomie still tangible.

 

Our conversation is like leafing through a book

With chapters missing. How else to explain

What became of all that distance in between?

The years when his blonde hair turned white,

My Afro, salt and pepper grey.

 

Do you recall? He asks, and I do,

Though through the prism of a different lens.

One that time has bent out of shape,

A form of escape, from those

Days of the blackboard jungle. And I wonder,

Were we ever on the same page?

 

On those shifting sands of time,

Lines were drawn. Days when our fathers

Told us constantly, you don't know you're born.

 

Sitting in regimented rows to be taught by those

With lives left raw by war we’d never known,

While we hungered for change. Unaware

Their deranged landscape was always present,

But never spoken of.

 

What shall we write? we’d ask.

 

Were they recalling letters from the front,

By those who didn’t make it home; that

Served as lessons for others to learn?

 

‘Paper never refused ink’, they’d groan!