My Santiago

We were Five (An acknowledgement of ‘our’ adolescence - Ralph Wickramasinghe 1952-2000 RIP) 25/03/18

We were five in those sultry Colombo days, Those heady, complex times of teenage angst. We were five, Inseparable in all we did, And we had something - hard to capture - in this too grown up life.

The names, Allan, Trevor, Ralph, Errol, Michael,

Four still around, One, lost his way, Too early, Too soon to go.

And yet he lived As he willed. Fierce resistance, Fits of anger, A cocky life lived with scant regard for convention, Respectability, Or the false gods

that dictate What we do, How we dress, Where we live...

I missed him when he went, Although we had not spoken for years; Friendships are like that.

He was my yardstick, My measure of our resistance to life’s insistent boundaries of living; And whilst he lived,

It seemed real and possible.