1 minute read
Ave atque Vale by Brian Smith
from Now We Are Five
Ave atque Vale
Arriving just in time for morning break, His beige face fades into the magnolia wall. He hopes to catch a colleague for a chat. The HR woman offers him some tea.
Irrelevant, ingratiating, dull, His conversation turns around himself In pressing reinvention of the past. “I remember when we first took girls.”
Workstations ring the room where he held court The chair he sat in cleared away as junk. His memories are a trap for busy folk Who ‘must get on’, and naturally he is
No longer helpful as a referee, His expertise as Head of Classics now As useful as a VHS cassette. She turns. “Do you take sugar? I forget.”
Brian Smith
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