Byways

Salad days,

Did I miss them?

Fond salad days,

Did I kiss them

Goodbye,

For a shot

At the serious?

To be more earnest,

When a sky

Of love and larkery

Beckoned?

Did I try to be

The old head 

Too soon?

Reckoned the one

To lunge at the tape,

Run up a score,

Make an escape -

By book and chalk

And a hammering

In my head.

It seems,

Whatever we do,

Whatever the talk,

It is all a kind,

Of hullabaloo.