First as children to the schoolhouse,
remember the fun and games,
hopscotch and blindman’s bluff.
Remember too the lessons,
English and mathematics,
we used to hate them both.
Then there were the teachers,
we had nicknames for them all.
But as the years slipped quietly by,
quite unnoticed by us all.
We had to go to work,
spring, summer, winter, fall.
The peel of bells,
and the sound of laughter,
greeted our Wedding day.
As down the lane to the church,
we all made our way.
But in the distant, echoes of a shattered peace,
were to part us soon,
as the thunder of a hundred thousand feet,
of men marching off to war.
Would soon be heard,
not a mile from our door.
Many of their lives would be stolen,
in battlefields far away.
Few would return, disillusioned,
and full of dismay.
The church is filled with silent payers,
for loved ones in a strange land.
Where men and boys fight,
side by side, hand in hand.
But soon the years slipped by again,
slowly the war was ended.
No one really won.
The lives lost on both sides,
proved the futility of it all.
So once again, we are reunited,
but we are strangers as we meet.
The war has taken its toll,
of my legs and feet.
Time has changed us both,
we are not as close as we were.
We have to learn about each other,
try and sooth the scars of war.
Gentle is our first approach,
the war has made us cautious.
Soon the sound of children,
echo in our vacant lives.
Memories are rekindled,
of our earlier times.
So down the narrow lanes we wander,
as we’ve done so many times before,
but its with new young lives we go.
Let’s hope they will succeed,
where we have failed before.
11/2/1980