Looking Back On Days Now Passed Poem by Reginald Reid

Reflections on Childhood and Youth
Why when I was just the smallest lad so many years ago
The older folk were in control as they knew all there was to know
We went to school and listened to them talk of things we never knew
Well that's the kind of thing we did and for years we did it too.

Take for example how to speak and use the proper words
And spell them all instead of using stuff we'd often overheard
Then numbers were a thing to grasp and turn them inside out
Only then to find results that made the teachers shout.

Good relations and playing fair were necessary too
For making friends that might sustain for years as some are wont to do
Belonging, caring, sharing, loneliness and joy
In those years emotions blossomed that we now still employ.

And then the uncertain times as bodies changed and grew
We know now what our hormones are and what they really do
But then, just behind us there the older folk knew more
Of what was yet to come for us beyond dear nature's magic door.

Impossible to capture all those years we spent in youth
Or try to live them once again a never ending truth
It's a passage that I could pass through only once
And looking back in retrospect acknowledge I was such a dunce.