Beating the drums

Four friends and a twenty-year-old son

spread around the beach

and the bonding that took place, everybody as one

the night before around the bonfire, meetings of the minds within reach

reminding me of ages gone by, when everybody gathered around the central fire,

young and old alike told stories, huddled in the lee

and the young were as much a part of it as the old, being together didn’t become dire

nobody felt compelled to tell anybody else the way it should be

this intergenerational bonding was taken for granted.

Where did we lose it along the way?

in our inexorable march towards technological nirvana, we have become particularly slanted

so that son and father are pitted against each other, as mother and daughter compete and everybody pays.

I’ve never been one to begrudge progress but it seems it’s not so sweet

that we’ve lost some unregistered but precious quality

and I’m not talking about chest  or drum beating weekend retreats

but simple sharing of that deep down essence, the waft of scent or quick smile, humanness, not humanity

When did something so elementary become incomprehensible?

a high tech skill to be taught at a workshop somewhere, at two hundred and fifty a pop

if only we could all relax and let go of expectations, instead of becoming reprehensible

to our own flesh and blood,  instead just let it drop.

There is in all of this somewhere a key

And it’s letting young people unfold in whatever ways they are meant to and at the same time have fun

in the meantime, I’ll catch just a glimmer of the way it used to be

with three middle-agers and a twenty year old son.

Janet Bellinger

 c 2006