Twenty Years

(For Yinka)

They say twenty children cannot play together

For twenty years.

Time spools and focuses shift away from the playground.

Geography supervenes, ally forces disperse,

Brownian motion of  sapiens.

They say people are fluid, like water,

But are not as clear.

We, human, ours: to err,

Raise hell and count casualties.

Time is a currency,

We may not have spent it wisely

But, oh, good times we had

Good times we banked in memories

Good times pictures preserved

Good times that rouse fancy smiles.

But fraternal cord, like filial ones,

Snap too, into two, sometimes more.

Let it slide,

Debit memories

There will be time, like Eliot said, there will be time

To frolic in each other’s hands and successes.

There will be dinner parties and peals

Of laughter and harvest of memories

There will be toasts to long easy lives

Accompanying chants of Auld Lang Syne.

For twenty children who played for twenty years

Will bear twenty children who will play for twenty years,

Tomorrow.