What the future brings ?

I’ve never gone to a school or college reunion and doubt I ever will, but I do sometimes wonder what became of old friends and acquaintances. No doubt, there’d be stories of all kinds running from the roaring successes to the tragic.

Sometimes the stories are all too apparent in faces: the open faces, the weary faces, electrocuted, wary, bored. And sometimes it’s in the cut of the cloth: ostentatious, careless, bohemian, carefree, down at heel; sometimes it’s the demeanour.

It’s intriguing to look back at the old photos, to see happy young faces, knowing how lives unfolded subsequently. Sad oftentimes. Happy carefree people already on their journey towards………………..

Margaret.     (d. 1961)

Child that played and skipped

and ran, 

climbed among the trees

when the adult was as far away

as death itself. 

Woman in a countryside

of old men and their wives

turning spidery;

rain and years

between herself and old age. 

London: Irish skivvy;

that rolling unrolling knot

of mop, bucket and woman 

paid with poverty for accepting

oblivion. 

Spitalfields and squalor;

A dark coat, bark-rough face

beaten to a glower;

culprit and victim,

drink took them both.