Paul Willason Poet Free verse

Tell Me

There are things 
that memory keeps 
and seals in a locket, 
often gleaming 
with an untarnished intensity 
when opened and childhood
emerges, wide eyed
and ready
to catch the light.

Old minds push much
of childhood aside 
and dismiss as fantasy
the fire and freeze that rage
across the wildlands
of little lives. Real life
comes later, they say.
Feelings burnt into the tissue
of a young child's brain
are just passing shadows
playing tricks to feign 
a lasting permanence.
They'll soon get over it.

Yet, as you read, who
can't recall the flame
that burned in the heart when
it found its first love
in a class at primary school.
Tell me, that what swept 
the mind back then was nothing
but a glancing crush or bruise
too shallow to last a week,
that the tears and love
that welled when the other
was near, never was real
but a childish deception. Tell me
the depths of so much feeling
was an invention,
a silly game, a virus caught
from a book and that childhood
can never bless the soul 
with authentic love or scar it
with pain. Tell me
how it is that a face 
can still be seen 
and memory has not let go 
of a name.

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