I learned about Oxalic Acid
At seventeen
When less than anxious for yet more information
More notes on a chalkboard
In a malodorous Sulphurous school room.
Hastily copied in pencil
Scribbled then and required to be transformed
Later, into copperplate, almost textbook pages.
To be judged as adequate; or not.
Oxalic Acid; not as deadly.
But in a close league,
To the clear deadly liquids
Held in the dusty skull marked bottles
Within easy reach of any manic schoolboy.
Dusty bottles in a rack
In a rack on a bench
On a bench where I sat
Where I sat wondering why my mind
My sharp juvenile mind would never grasp
Molecular Valence Theory quite as well
As the taste of a girls lips
The smell of her hair
The ring of her laugh
The answer to a question in her eyes.
Years later
When that girl had gone
I read that Oxalic Acid is found in Rhubarb leaves.
Pie making always brings such fascinating memories from a boyhood half a century ago.
