Boys' Own Up

Every hill was Spyglass, 
or we took turns as Breck and Balfour.
All arrows were Black,
and roses - white or red - meant nothing.
We played Hyde and Seek,
before we knew allegory from metaphor.

Each sandbank was Coral,
we were ignorant of the message
hidden in plain sight:
there were three boys, that was all that mattered,
until we struck Golding’s
dangerous island off the coast of puberty.