Class Reunion

‘Never look back,’ is a piece of advice that I am not sure I agree with. Last year I met up with an old friend, someone I had lost contact with when I left the school and the area I had lived in. This led recently to me attending an informal reunion of some of the members of my old class of 1961. I had seen none of these old classmates for 49 years. Sometimes the only way to capture something on paper seems to be in the form of a poem. Poetry has an ability to handle feelings and emotions so well; this was one of those occasions.

Class Reunion

The room is crowded, heads all turn,
familiarity… and yet?
My mind is racing to decode,
unlock a past that hides behind
receding hairlines, streaks of grey
and faces etched and lined by life.

A simple sound, a schoolboy jest,
a school girl laugh.
A voice… that tugs away the years
has slipped from lips that I once kissed.
Again I’m tongue tied, lost for words,
time stripped away to who I was.

But by this simple memory stirred,
I see in all those lived in faces,
lost and long forgotten friends,
whose shrugs, whose smiles, whose laughs, whose giggles
haven’t changed, they’re all still there,
for all their worries, all their cares.

Their chatter echoes playground chants.
Where did you go? Where have you been?
What happened to..? Who married him?
Do you remember…?
Yes… I do.
Oh yes! I do remember you.

Tags: Creative writing, Odd Odes, Poems, Poetry, Writing