Growing Pains

I left home at eighteen never to return, 
nothing amiss, it was just time to go,
all the reasons were there
freedom work love money,
looking back I realise that 
even though no words were spoken, 
or advice given, nor requested,
my parents must have had the opinion 
that I knew it all, 
although I never claimed to,
it was 1970
I was leaving for a world
in which they had never lived
a brave new alien world,
a place with its own language
where without knowing, without
fault on their part, they had
become estranged, subconsciously
without remorse without harm,
some fifty years later
my own children having set sail
without me saying a word
I have become a mute mourner
benignly standing watch 
as their own, my grandchildren 
search for wood and nails
to build their boats

*

© Graham R Sherwood 01/23