Now that I’m pushing sixty, I spend time,

Much more time than I used to, looking back

Instead of forwards. Back, over my shoulder,

Down the hill of years,  there stand long-demolished pubs

Where we sank our first illicit pints;

Snogs at the bus-stop, or the last train home...

 

Was that even me, those years ago?

I’m not looking for my lost youth,

I know exactly where he is, he’s prisoner

Inside the flat planes of photographs

Black and white, I know him all too well

Awkward and gawky, John Lennon glasses,

Flares and tennis shoes, back in the day

Before they got called `trainers’.

 

Places like this don’t help: my past’s online

As if I was already part of history. Why am I here?

Because my old school friend (now lives in Wales)

Sent me a link to click on, and up pops

This photo, taken 1967; both the message

And the medium witchcraft to us, then.

 

Boothferry Playing Fields, yeah, there we are,

Boys and girls both, fixed in our best blue uniforms,

Staring out into a future that became

Lots of different lives, shorter for some than others

Blank pages, still to be written, tangled skeins

Names to be grafted on vacant branches

In the distant family tree.

 

Their eyes ask what I want of them, especially the girls,

With their prim white kneesocks; that’s easily answered!

I want the same now as what I wanted then, but more so!

Though `now’ would be more difficult, `now’ would involve

Me ironing out my wrinkles, standing up (a miracle!)

And shrugging off the rucksack of the decades

That I carry – and for them, much harder,

 

Changing back their names, rising from the pages of the dead,

Pulling on tight jeans, frizzing their hair, getting stoned,

Wearing beads and headbands and

Coming through my screen, their virgin presences

Filling the room with the scent of patchouli

- Filling my life with what might have been.