"When I Was Twenty..."

Saturday morning.  A day to go see witches and wizards - again. the children grown beyond their make-believe and on the edge of what now?  Some to college - but they and all the others will soon pay for the clues, we always do pay for clues it seems.

"When I Was Twenty..."

Outdoor cafe
coffee
open journal
flowing ink
the world flowing by...
awaiting friends to pause.

When I was twenty -
Beaches held gunfire
roaring ears...
pulses measured in mini
heart attacks
and legs so heavy
you remembered how to pray.

Drinking was illegal
but we all cheated
often
and without any class to it.
We imagined -
our selves,
legends-in-our-time -
GIANTS doing as giant do
being as GIANTS are...
children of lesser-gods.

...and we died hard
for every sin in man's litany of omission.
We were right, wrong,
and every shade of meaningless in-between.
God cried, we cried,
they cried -
everything cries,
when it must
and in its own time.

We had heroes too -

old school
life's school
people that somehow had MORE

when so very few had ANY...
Heroes.

Twenty was a good year
- a very good year -
to become twenty-one.

Chris

 

Author's Note

We mark era's endings as we can.

Reviews

[olla]

I was married and pregnant with my second child at twenty.. and just entering the battlefield.. but I didn't know it then..

[Sunflower]

Beautiful write, i can see everything so vividly.

[Joe Shetina]

Oh, reminds me of "When I was one-and-twenty" by A.E. Houseman, but very much your own style. Being only eighteen, I try my best to live the way I would have wanted to twenty, thirty years from now. But I'm always aware that what I want now and what I will want then may be very different. Fantastic write.

[roarke]

somehow I get the impression there was, more, of so much more. You brought me back there, mine different, less aware... but you brought me back there with you, the trait of a master craftsman. I want to hear more about the heroes of your era, there are so few left today in my opinion, we can only remember them now...

[Christina May Shanaberg]

You pretty much covered what it is like for most of us at twenty. At fifty five, with all of the children and men in my life gone, I feel some of being twenty, again. The freedom, the lack of stress, occasional parties without worrying about sleeping little ones, and doing what "I" want to do. It reminds me of a song called, "Happy, Happy, Happy By Myself." Excellent writing!

[Viki Rachel]

"Twenty was a good year - a very good year - to become twenty-one"
A little bit funny, I smiled to myself. It's as if you're just waiting but you're having fun while doing it. It would be, indeed, the end of an era; but the 1st thing I'll think when I'm 21 is: PARRTTAYYYY.
It was sweetly nostalgic.

[Joiedevivre]

strong nostalgia evoked, but there is a time for everything.

[Chris]

Jeremy,

Our lives intersect with so many... other lives, places, events - even ends. Some have open eyes... others wish they could. Some get too busy surviving THEIR times to live them.

Thanks for pausing and being a friend.

Take care,
Chris

[Jeremy Baker]

You've certainly lived through some remarkable and tumultuous times, Chris, and you certainly write with authority, without guessing, just looking back with understanding. I'm almost 40 and beginning to feel the stirrings of nostalgia for my early 20s. Very enjoyable to read.