Tom Jones in Verse

Written by Tom Jones

for our gathering on 18 October 2024

Parallel Paths

We started high school sixty years ago

all dressed alike; all products of that time.

If not for twists of fate or luck, I might

have chosen your career instead of mine,

or met your girl before she looked at you,

embarking on the life you live today,

while you could have led mine. If not for chance,

each life might have been lived some other way.

We now gaze at each other, grizzled men,

each fashioned by what chance led him to be.

But if life dealt some other hands of cards,

one of your lives could well have been for me.

Of course, we can’t go back to start again

but meeting up enables us to know 

how other options may have been played out

if we had swapped lives sixty years ago.