After the 45th reunion, I penned the following verse. I forget whether I had already shared it with you.
School Competition
A chance to read a poem of my own
to all my schoolmates gathered! Would they sneer
or think me stupid, as I used to fear?
Perhaps this honour could somehow atone
for lunchtimes spent unfriended and alone.
I edged towards the microphone with hope
of putting right the doubts and shame of years
in high school, feeling lesser than my peers;
while never knowing whether I could cope
with clawing up achievement’s awesome slope.
But faces looking back would never more
be schoolboys. They were greying, wrinkled men-
reunion revellers recalling when
they’d started high school fifty years before
and since had lived the lives they’d studied for.
The pressure that we’d all once felt to thrive
as sporting stars or scholars was now gone.
We’d come tonight to reminisce, along
with seeing which of us was still alive.
The competition now? Just to survive.
Best Wishes,
Tom Jones
