Once, before our births,
Potatoes, beans and sprouts would have grown beneath our feet, in that earth.
In soil that now tended wild yellow grasses which swayed in time to the beating wings of orange tip butterflies.
Remnants of privet borders stood, angled and isolated.
Deep green dividing lines, dividing nothing, protecting nothing.
Long silent the clucking hen, replaced now by chuckling children building summer dens.
Rosebay Willow herb interlaced or flattened into a secret place, where secrets would be kept, and sunkissed children slept, who, later, as adults wept.
And clinging to some near lost aim, the berries would ripen again, the blushing goosgog a rare delight of late summer days that were almost nights.
Here we gathered for November rites, now forgotten games and crackling flames, and communal smoke that wrapped us in its acrid cloak,
The sparks reflected in our eyes would merge with stars in coal black skies.
And then the fog of autumn came, and we turned our backs on summer games.
Missives & Musings 