There were many who I held a candle to
in a world full of chalk dust, well aimed projectiles
and the despair of being told that you
were not good enough to breathe the same air
as the teacher’s favourite Rottweiler,
snarling, punishing with savage artistry
and then finished off with the red pen death
of being
wrong, wrong, wrong.
There were many, my diary attests to this unhappy fact,
who in one way or another made my life more bearable
when not in English, History or the love of the drama
filled classroom or hearing the notes of half hearted
violin sentencing most to death by bow
but to me prolonged the agony
felt as I thought of their names walking the two miles home.
Whether the first kiss of the girl who
I rebelled against, to my shame, as I tasted
the smoke under her lips, the burning of two young fires
casting adrift on and off for the next three years,
the ginger haired woman who I never kissed
till we were both messed up
and need of love for one night only as the thirties
took their toll, my fleeting glimpse of mid-life crisis
when there was no crisis to be found.
The passion of the girl who at fourteen caused me
embarrassment as she stroked my leg with purpose
in the hall and for a bet, we both lost that day,
the girl who stole my hat and ran laughing
across the manicured lawn
of the British Museum, only to be caught
as fifteen year olds are oft to do and came within
a second of having her sandpaper coloured lips
gently kissed,
to the girl I never asked out at all, my dear friend
to whom our secret desire to be more than we could be
on the stage drove us to a deeper passion, honest, frank and a different
kind of love achieved.
None though have dominated the thought like the girl
I took to Banbury, a true date and away from the
back of the sport centre snogging arena in which
many of us graduated with ease.
I thank her for that date, it changed the way I looked
at the world and she has been seen in many,
not least the girl I lost on the bus, the would be artist
on her way to Paris as we talked
of all for twelve hours on the Greyhound
and whom I never saw again.
Ian D. Hall 2015