The crucible of boyhood
I remember well the creek near my home
Where our fledgling group played on-and-off for years
A few short minutes down the road
Prized domain of my childhood peers;
This ‘bolt-hole’,
This window into nature,
Fed these boys’ boundless dreamy wonder.
Not a stream, you’d say, but a trickle of a creek
The tadpoles and the frogs
Our captive subjects there
The odd tortoise if our luck was really in
Colourful dragonflies, they’d flight, buzz and stare;
A bridge too, there amongst it,
Our meeting place down-under.
Where our fledgling group played on-and-off for years
A few short minutes down the road
Prized domain of my childhood peers;
This ‘bolt-hole’,
This window into nature,
Fed these boys’ boundless dreamy wonder.
Not a stream, you’d say, but a trickle of a creek
The tadpoles and the frogs
Our captive subjects there
The odd tortoise if our luck was really in
Colourful dragonflies, they’d flight, buzz and stare;
A bridge too, there amongst it,
Our meeting place down-under.
A sea of bull-rushes guarded the sloping banks
We’d tamp them down and shape ourselves a fort
Within which, we’d gather distinctive objects about
To mark ownership of sorts;
Whereupon other lads would
By their nature, regularly invade,
Something you learnt of the tribal game.
Then one day to our surprise
Our hide came crashing down
A great yellow machine rolled on in to stay
An enemy such as this, we could not resist
Without a thought, so much taken away;
Our haven, brutally folded, into the ground
We had to prowl the streets …beyond, to stake a claim!
We’d tamp them down and shape ourselves a fort
Within which, we’d gather distinctive objects about
To mark ownership of sorts;
Whereupon other lads would
By their nature, regularly invade,
Something you learnt of the tribal game.
Then one day to our surprise
Our hide came crashing down
A great yellow machine rolled on in to stay
An enemy such as this, we could not resist
Without a thought, so much taken away;
Our haven, brutally folded, into the ground
We had to prowl the streets …beyond, to stake a claim!
From my desktop Grahame J Flynn Views in Verse
