The Reunion

forty years on, and still I have my small spoon and my small, chipped cup from Trinity College, Cambridge; sacred little relics, warm in my hands like talismans from another life.

last night the reunion surged through me: red wine dark and heavy, escargots glistening in garlic butter, the rich bloody fillet of lamb, old ghosts laughing across the table, the faces of wives and lovers flickering in the candlelight, stories rising and crashing like waves. now I sit alone in my quiet study at this small table, the little cup steaming before me, and the whole wild beautiful past comes back like a midnight freight train through the fog.

Trinity, the finest college under heaven. libraries breathing dust and centuries, oak ladders leaning tall against gleaming parquet, nineteenth-century volumes and forgotten classics crammed on the ancient shelves. love letters carved deep into the wood by some fevered hand with a knife or a bicycle key — Kate loves Ryan — raw scratches of young hunger turned holy with time. vandalism then, pure trembling history now.

I remember the wild days with Pete and Felix, howling through it all together, sharing our mad lives and our women, passing hearts around like stolen cigarettes in the night.

and those goddamn assignments that pinned us down like crucifixes — working till the sky bled grey, surviving on whatever we could find, mostly the green mouldy penicillin bread from the back of the cupboard, leftovers swimming in bin juice. cold bitter nights, warm bagels snatched from somewhere, cramming knowledge into our skulls till our eyes burned. then out into the game — rugby tearing across muddy fields, hearts exploding, and those savage early mornings rowing against Oxford, oars cutting black water under freezing mist, bodies screaming, souls on fire.

an evening of sweet fierce memories, and my old friends long scattered to the winds or gone under the earth. and here I sit alone at my table for one, the cup empty, the spoon still shining, the beautiful sadness of it all rolling on through my blood like the endless river Cam.

a chipped college cup,
forty years of scattered friends—
the Cam still running.