Old Bohemians (Poetry)

We're the ones who queued too late
then watched the bus go by -
who waited, patient, in the cold
to glimpse a golden sky

where the road stretched grey and empty,
uninteresting and wet,
but a vision held us captive
with its promise vaguely kept

through years and years of looking,
as a dying sun went down
and mountains merged with forests
and distance blurred the towns

to smudges lit at random -
mere candles in the gloom
that guttered in the vastness
of a doorless waiting room,

and it's evening in life's schedule
of an age where chances lost
are passing us, unlisted,
grown mindless of the cost

as we thumb a lift for freedom -
nudged into moving on -
but ghostly wheels ignore us,
opportunity's long gone

and we're stranded in the shadows
at the roadside of our lives
with the thought that if we'd queue jumped
we might somehow have survived

and journeyed to a future,
predictable but blessed
with the icons of ambition
(plus the leg irons of success)

but without imagination -
and the discipline of dreams
is one sacrifice too many,
we're far better off it seems -

old bohemians by nature,
still unreachable by phone,
and so bedazzled by the sunset
that we miss the last bus home.