Ross Donlon: The Last Day

The Last Day
Form 5 Photograph Fort Street Boys’ High School, Sydney, 1962

Here we are (or were) on the school steps.

Our prefects, seated in front with the principal

a set of seated sphinx, fists parked on knees,

seem older than us standing behind them,

the less assured of future degrees and girls.

Academic rank and promise both decline

as rows climb steps until the bottom is top.

Haloes above front row boys also fade with altitude

and attitude, slip at rakish angles over smirks and smiles,

morph into question marks on clowns and fools,

and those whose third eye is a headache for now.

Higher still, my mates lean or slouch in half-uniform

and somewhere in the shade of the last sun

I’ve hidden in the shadow of a boy in front.

Yet as the phalanx of Fortians, Class of Sixty-Two,

freeze like adults for the last shot, I change my mind

(as might be expected) to peek out half-face,

one of the dreamy clueless: no prospects, no idea, poet.

Ross Donlon