Tom Jones - Verses on Reunions

Tom writes... "I regard this cohort of my peers as living parallel lives - those lives that perhaps I could have led, had I chosen differently (and had more talent).

I have composed a rhyme on the subject of reunions, which is attached.

  Old Boys’ Reunion

I’d  finished school at seventeen

When most of life was still unseen

I hardly knew my peers for I

Could barely look them in the eye.

Reunion after many years

Still generated hopes and fears

Could I now find a friendly glow

That wasn’t present years ago?

If in six years of high school then

We could not manage to be friends

What chance was there that now we’d find

Some intimacy that would bind?

But now at least I’d tasted life

Through work and study, kids and wife.

I’d learned to look men in the eye

And stepping forth, I could say “Hi”.

               Thomas Jones    14/9/13