BOOK OF ANDREWS

 

The first poem I ever wrote was about my family.

Struggling to find a rhyme to the rhythm it made;

pairing the rhyming lines with metaphors and similes,

without knowing what they were; did the best a ten-year-old could.

I read it once, and again, and many times to discover a joy not felt before.

I learned later that the joy was termed liberation in the adult world.

To have your thoughts inked in royal blue,

from the clutter that cries to be in straight lines.

The ten-year-old dreamt big with the thought of the poem

printed on the glossy paper of the school magazine.

My rhyming wonder was a drop in the ocean,

it did miss the chance to sit on those glossy sheets of paper;

not once, not twice, but many times as the ten became twenty and grew up, 

to believe that age is just a number.

In a world where everyone hurried to the finishing line first,

it might feel like a crime to settle for the second; it doesn’t really though.

Missing out on the cheers, the colour, and the pride that comes along.

But blend with the wall, smile with your eyes, dissolve in the crowd,

and feel less significant, said Andrew every time I slept with a heavy heart.

Andrew came to my rescue every time I felt lost, 

lifting me when I tumbled down to be the second even in love.

Who’s Andrew you wonder, you don’t know him.

Because Peter and Mathew and the rest among the twelve, we learned were the best;

No one cared who found the boy with the barley loaf and the fish,

which later fed the five-thousand.

He didn’t care either, he served a purpose with his insignificance,

with fewer words and deeds that seemed not worth the cheer, 

touching lives even after generations.