Honestly

A closet life until my wife,

the cloister monk, set single sex,

11+ Grammar, Boys of course,

until Advanced, then year off course.

Gap YM, see a hostel year -

females banned beyond the stair -

thence to Cambridge, male college days.

There were no femmes, fatale or not,

except my sisters - didn’t count.

No such peerless amongst my peers,

nor lip service when unscene seen.

Free love sixties, or flower power

were more of Nam, house rising sun.

I wasn’t there, that Woodstock gen -

for I was Shakespeare, Kubla Khan,

and captivated Gerard Man.

What girl wants Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats,

which boy befriends the poet swot?

So hear, this nil return is mine,

for cannot write of what don’t know.

You think it strange, naïvety?

I count it blessing, no disguise.

So take me, others, as we are,

Judaeo-Christian, sheltered lives,

primed by poets, and so thought strange,

but pride in age, creatively.

Fiction is not my métier;

so please forgive my honesty.

Another failure to conform;

I only take me as I am.