Journey's end

I long for childhood again, doubting my own sanity, when jar in hand and with nothing in my mind I would scamper across the fields of my youth to the river’s bank in that country I still call home so many thousand miles away as if it were yesterday. There standing in the sand, barefoot, wriggling my toes in the cold water I would fish for creatures of another time, tiddlers, sticklebacks and other unknown beings whose world I had invaded. As the muddy bottom stirred up it would be as a crystal ball first hiding then gradually revealing secrets as my life too was but a mystery to me. I have not forgotten those days when hopes and dreams, some fulfilled and some not, cast aside the utter joy of being, that for some reason I washed away like some wound never realising then knowing what was true happiness. I like so many others was in a hurry to get on to real living and not cursed as now with memories best forgotten. The young have places to go the old have nowhere to go but that does not stop us from rushing to the end of the line. Last year I went back to that river’s bank but it heeded me not, nor did the ancient trees which were still there weeping into the water. They didn’t see me as I was now disguised with age and they took more notice of the squealing barefoot children that had taken my place dozens of times over. The river wound on to the sea and me? I too wound my way on to journeys end as well.