Thirteenth Year

In my thirteenth year
I did not sing
on the school bus.

I did not add my voice
to the back seat chorus
on the upper deck.

I tapped my sensible shoes
to the rhythm, the beat of the day,
its journey and mine, beginning;

In my second decade,
too old, too schooled,
under the spell of learning,
I bent my mind to science.

‘The future,’ my teachers told me,
‘the elusive dream of progress
is yours for the taking’.

In my thirteenth year
poetry, art and song
were not my gift.

I did not sing
as I shuffled toward
compliance;

on that road,
believing knowledge
to be wisdom,
I was none the wiser.

© BH, 2022

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More remembering. The curse of looking back to check what it was went before. Schooldays. The faltering steps I, we, took. All those efforts of understanding. And the ways destiny cut across our expectations. Science? A;ways with me. But the artist’s soul which lived beside it would never let it be.

If there would be wisdom, maybe the union of both is at its heart.