Tribute to my Lost Youth

John Field

It was one of those perfect

summer afternoons:

sky cloudless gentle baby blue

temperature anchored

at a benign eight-nine.

Soft breezes jabbing the trees

with their old one-two-three

so sweet and fine

that boys leapt high

to shame the earth its stationary ways.

Even my intellectual friends

stopped working on their thoughts

for an hour or two

relaxed at the beach

then giggled under water

as they rinsed out

the sunlight flashing in their eyes.

That afternoon love from another world

lit the fuse

that burned up the spines of couples

naked in their appetites

far more than human,

forcing them to confess

their secret hankerings,

most of them strange

as they melted into each other.

I was there. Once I was one of them.