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‘Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow
Ah but I was so much older then,
I’m younger than that now.’
Bob Dylan

How thick – that fog of ages;
adrift in a haze of days, listening
to the drumbeat thrum of time.

How dear to our hearts we hold
those first hellos – fumbled gropings,
in the back-row of the flicks...
Hastily scrawled,

‘Meet me behind the bike-shed,
I think I love you’, notes...scratched
vinyl memories of ‘Save
the Last Dance...’

Now, all that counts –
the tapping of the sap to the nth
degree...not to encourage fresh growth –

to make the most of the here
and the now, for as long
as that may be...

a scrapbook of Strawberry Moons,
and quavering rivers, a you, and a me...
the sweeping of words into piles

and the wondering...why –
when, where, and who...the giver
of that last kiss, ‘Goodbye’.