MOOD BLACK 1965

A BOY AND GIRL IN 1965 AND HER MOTHER AND LACK OF TRUST

Tilly walked with me
to the bus stop.

It was evening,
and warm,
and the sky
was darkening.

Your mum I think
suspects we
have been up
to something?
I said.

Tilly looked past me
at the trees behind
how tall and shadowy
they seemed.

She always suspects,
even if I am gone
from the room
she suspects
I have you in my room,
and comes up and knocks,
and says: all alone?
And she peers in my room
as if at any moment
you will come out
from under the bed,
or out of
the tall boy wardrobe.

Trusting sort isn't she?
I said.

Always has been,
Tilly says,
my sister is a one
with boys and she
watches her like a hawk.

I look at the sky
getting darker.

You do love me
don't you, Benny?

Of course I do,
I said,
ever since that first kiss
back in 1961
when you were 13
and I was 14.

She looked at me,
her lovely eyes
searching me,
that was quite
a kiss that,
she said.

Yes breath taking,
I said.

She kissed me
and it was quite
a long kiss.

Then the bus came along,
and we parted,
and I got on the bus
and I waved
and she weaved back,
and the bus moved off,
and I felt sad
and my mood black.

Reviews

[authorised1960]

I'm not so sure that this really works as a poem...

A short prose piece would perhaps have been more appropriate - and more effective. Even so you have expressed yourself well.

[Terry Collett]

Thank you.