Lessons In Life I Should Have Learned
Unearthly early he woke us,
not long after midsummer sunrise.
I was already awake.
It was not home.
I could not sleep.
Trundling clatter-foot
through hard boarded hallways,
the little man led us out into the rising mist,
along crunchable gravel walkways
and into a green feast of forest and fields.
We ran and ran and ran and ran,
miles and miles it seemed,
soon hot and sweaty and icky
in that sticky morning sun
until we came to the slow flowing river
where we all dived in
but did not swim.
The cold stole your breath
but cooled you quick.
He ran us back,
dripping and slippery,
panting and gasping,
through sentinel trees
and the scent of pine
and squirrels and rabbits
and butterflies and birds
and the silence of our minds.
I hated it,
the breathlessness,
the being away from home,
the living with strangers,
the food, the bad beds, the cold halls
and the competitions.
The little man was called Eric.
He came dead off a mountain,
trying to get everything
out of just one life.
Now, a hundred years on,
older but no wiser,
I still dream of that time
and I realise
how much I loved it.
Writing Me Up 