Just as a frog cannot relate to a tadpole,
He could not recognise his younger self.
No retrospective map of life had he,
No string-tied bundles of diaries
Or heavy-hearted Journals
To reunite him with the naïf
Who floated along life's river
Unaware of being navigated by others,
Others who rowed but did not instruct
And abandoned ship on the stroke of his eighteenth
Leaving him overawed and falling overboard,
To eventually flounder upon the shores of independence
Until he was forced to stand on his own two feet of clay,
Like some evolving amphibian
Waddling into life,
Stomping and stumbling in the quagmire of society.
A faux pas here, a faux pas there,
Slow and painful lessons
That built resilience and self-reliance
Resulting in a proudly self-made man,
Now unaccustomed to failure
And whose memories of humiliating failure
Have sunk to the bottom of the river of his life.