Being Seventeen

Being seventeen – just shy a year of when
meaning takes a thin view of past eras, of
growing pains, of vaster distances than the
eye spans easily. Being seventeen in clothes
made today to wear today; no copies of this
hair persuaded of the coiffure of the street,
in the colours of the stars, in the shimmer of
the air where each one stares at this body
being seventeen, at this person being me.

Tell me that you care and give to me those
glances aching with the craving evident in
eyes despair, seeing me being seventeen,
agreeing and wishing you where there.
© 11 December 2007, I. D. Carswell

Cyber-daughter Trystal Wright turned
17 on Monday, 10 December 2007.
Congratulations!  In point of fact I'd got
it wrong - Trystal turned 16! I apologised 
and offered her the poem for her next birthday 
 - saying she was really that mature...