How will it feel to see you again?

Part of me is terrified, not of you, but

of the memories you will bring to town

and lay at my door mat as you knock repeatedly,

Time your ally as you surprise me with a giant

version of pass the parcel, my layers since leaving you

regretfully, in some cases with genuine tears of affection,

stripped back, the me of now, just a school boy in bigger

trousers, longer hair, still angry at the world;

regressing through Time until the music

stops.

 

I plan to acclimatise.

That is the big idea, to get off the train in Bicester

and wheel around a while, take in old haunts,

the Launton football pitch, the Scout hut and reminisce of failure

and the wake of the canoe in which

an Eskimo Roll was the highlight of a Friday night,

to see the failure of never seeing you

or the town for what it was until I turned 13;

by then, almost too late.

 

I plan to acclimatise to the past and revel

in the non-descript Sunday morning paper round

in which by seven O’clock, my anger at the world had grown

and how I wished from such a young age

I just had learned to enjoy bed, instead of believing it to be

something in which only happened when sick.

I will accustom myself ahead of the day by looking at the many

photographs of you deep inside my memory

and then be amazed of how we’ve grown and how we

feel as we now head back into the shell of Earth,

closer to the finish line than we ever were on Sports Day.

 

I’m terrified that you won’t remember me,

and yet for thirty years you have probably not given me a

second thought, except some vague hint of recall

in which you scratch the back of your neck

and think for some reason of Progressive Rock,

longish hair, the stupidity of the post teen poet

who asked you out and to whom the idea of romance

was the stolen kiss at the back of the Sports Centre,

in amongst a thousand other such kisses

that were decorated by the first flush of girls wearing stockings

and the smell of cigarette smoke hanging in the air

as we aimed to keep fit.

 

I’m terrified of seeing you again…

and yet thrilled beyond measure as

I wade through names that adorned my years in Bicester

and the sentiment that the night might bring.

 

To the memory of the pupils of Bicester School.

Ian D. Hall 2015