I have spent the day with ghosts

and the twighlight

with spectres from a time I never wanted to let go.

I remember you all, I have felt like a bookkeeper in my heart

as each memory grows sepia with time

and the sadness I feel at the names of fallen,

hurt and punish my thoughts, deep

unyielding and untimely ends.

 

The pain of memory is such that in the light

offered by the shadow of a single forty watt sun

and the dim illumination of a progressive typewriter, begrudgingly

captures my painful euphoria.

I shed tears, both of joy, happiness and the feeling of being scared

at what I have lost along the distant highway

as I realise of the youth I have lost and how

you remind me of it.

 

The modern age, so different from our time together,

where such things as pecking order dictated

your life, how popularity guided and shaped

Time and how thirty years later I wonder if it will

happen again when those I spent

a different time with, perhaps more distant, yet

as close as were then, thrust against a system so cruel

and yet one I would live through again.

 

Ian D. Hall 2015.