The Guidance Of Friends

I grew up in a town
where the cinema closed down
when I was eleven years old,
seemingly never to re-open.

Had it limped on, shown films
fit for edgy teenagers I still would not
have had been given pocket money
to throng with the youths watching
the cowboy films of the 1970's,
that I might feel included in normality.

Seeing films on television gave me no sense
of their proportion, or the ability they aspired to,
in their original settings, to take a person out of themselves.

Seeing films as a pensioner, in the cinema,
the memories a value most are the times
I have been in there before, with a friend,
and how easily he got out of his seat to complain 
to the manager whilst the film is still showing.

The decision to leave when you know
you have seen enough applies not just to films,
but also to real life, where people freeze so easily.

To be able to stop, and leave when you choose to,
half aware of the consequences of doing so,
is a choice too many people deny each other.