Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
I Caught the Sun
I’ll catch the sun,
and never give it back again
-Rod McKuen, “I’ll
Catch the Sun”
I caught the sun, but have to give it back
Always in memories, sometimes in bits of flesh
Once by square inches, now by centimeters
In the modern measurements of loss
We often caught the sun, shirtless and sunburnt
In the golden summers of our glorious youth
When solar radiation was good for us
While building bob-wire fences and working the fields
I once showed off my tan to pretty girls
But
now only to dermatologists
“Bob wire” is the sweat-stained vernacular; “barbed wire”
is the usage of people who never built fence.