I remember those August days,
Trembling on the brink of summer
Like a swimmer dipping a toe.
I remember blameless hours spent
Drifting through the heat like a blowfly,
Indolent and
Slow.
I remember casual cricket games and
Cut price soft drinks causing a local sensation.
I remember the group gatherings behind the scout hall
To share cigarettes and have a stab at being adults,
Secure in the knowledge that such things were impossible.
Adults were a separate species and we would never grow up.
We were complete as we were.
I remember November, hopping from
Pool of shade to pool of shade like a bullfrog,
All to get to the river and fry anyway
A tangerine mosaic of sticky sweets and dry grass,
Of swimming horizons and excited, sleepless nights where
We would play childish word games and
Talk for hours about precisely nothing.
Yet, to us, it was everything.
A loosely jointed circle between the pool, the shop and
The park, in those days when icecreams were 50c and
School a rapidly sinking memory.
I remember the sun hovering above us like a polished golden coin,
Cycloptic witness to our petty thefts and juvenile scheming,
Striking down on our heads like a marshmallow hammer,
Making me want to stretch out and purr.
I remember the slow receding of the heat
When the summer scale is lifted for another year
And life must be faced once more.
I remember the web of friendship we had woven with our
Words and with our deeds dissolved under the rain of Autumn and
Left me with cupped hands, hands
Filled with the sugared water of my happiness.
Sweet nectar that dried soon enough and
Left my hands sticky, *****, stark against the
Bitter wind of the winter.
I remember falling off the tightrope of my life and finding
Not the net that I had never needed but
A drop that I could only guess at,
Where the sun fell away with quicksilver speed and
I was stripped naked by the wind left
Cold and shivering, hugging my knees as I fell.
I remember growing up and leaving my childhood
Behind like a skin I had outgrown, like a
Friend that I had broken contact with.
I remember coloured dreams breaking like crystal.
I remember being at the top of my mountain and
Tumbling away, away
I remember crying for my
Joy gone by.
I remember, one day I will forget and
Then I will have moved on and my hands will be
Clean again.
Wrote this many years ago, at age 16. My first realisation I had left childhood behind, I still recall writing it and all the images, ah the energy of youth.