Joe Kelly: Childhood

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< Poems by Joe Kelly >

Deborah Parkin - "Playtime," "How I Learned to Drive" is making me think a lot about just how magical childhood is and just how much we romanticize it.

Childhood

We probably went to school together.
You were a pain and so was I.
We laughed and were loved
and we probably beat our enemies and won great battles
in the schoolyard that was not the playing fields of Eton.

Noisy, chattering and a bit smelly was childhood.
Saturday night was bathnight and we asked Mum
"Where do babies come from?"
"I'll tell you about that when you are a little older" she said.
Lost dreams that were my youth.
Yes, I feel we were all children together
in the classroom that was childhood.