Growing Apart - Poem by Ivan Donn Carswell

We knew their names
or thought we did, we knew their faces
from an album of places we‘d played
in a fabulous lifetime of childhood shared.
Events of our beginnings declared us united
by common ascent, whether they liked it or cared,
but they were there to be watched and we knew,
if we dared we could renew contemporaneous
friendships by being unmoved, by denying
the medium they gathered under. While it was true
we had suffered them forever we had, as yet,
never met them; today was the first we could meet
in this state – if we could take our feet past the line.
We traded coy glances, declining to stare, being seen
to be staring was grossly uncool, but one had to watch
to see who watches whom. We found it bizarre,
defying all wit to seem not to care or show worry a bit
while emotionally primed and dying despairing
she mightn’t be watching, or declaring her stake.
The debate about playing the part still rages,
the roles they are playing, the role of teenagers
uneasily acting the fires in their hearts
and caught in the chill
of their growing apart.
© I.D.Carswell