Different Faces

Different Faces

Different Faces

Do you recall that party
on your eighteenth birthday?
Food and shandy, fun and games
all of us punch-drunk on youth
and each one wearing masks,
different faces? I remember
doing a cha-cha-cha with Batman,
jiving, twisting, dizzy spirals
spinning through a waltz
of various masks and colours.
All that clowning, downing drinks,
fending off a few advances,
until midnight struck! Then you
untied my mask, and . . .

It’s been great,
seeing you again, beneath
the station clock, on platform one,
both waiting for a train,
and babbling pleasant phrases.
My mind goes whirring;
if I had a magnet
strong enough to stop
that clock and turn it
back to midnight, long ago,
would you again untie our masks?
And would we find? . . .

The train comes
panting in. A hurried wave,
we fight our way on,
clinging for dear life.
We start moving slowly forward,
going in the same direction,
going, going, gone!

Our masks are intact,
grown into faces
and we will alight
at different places.