BETWEEN LUNCH AND TEA TIME

Up the drive

past the box and yew arch

into shrubberies where we’d fought

against the Foreign Legion

with valour and conkers;

under the molten dark

of the copper beech

towards the west lodge’s pudding-stone;

past the paddock

where my kite had measured the sky

and Judy and Sparks

nibbled short grass

by a luxuriance of nettles.

The long straight lane

under sycamore parachutes.

Here we prepared to un-tongetie

our ‘good afternoons’

for the distantly approaching villager.

On the right, collapsed in places

in answer to village prayer,

a clay wall

humped under its corrugated frill;

on the left empty fields

watched over by the waiting hazels and plane trees.

At last,

eyes meeting like furtive moth wings,

we exchanged ‘good afternoons’.

At the level crossing

with its empty signal box

we looked right, then left

and sneaked over creosoted wood.

Here were withy boles and a dark stream,

and the lane swung left

under trees dripping with ivy

to a brook

where my jam jar plumbed the shallows,

chasing minnow-packs or,

more exciting,

the monstrous spines of the stickleback.

Under the bridge of the Wylye mill race

withy wands softened in water;

along the banks of the stream we crept

in search of buffalo or mountain lion,

my arrows wounding

sedges and hostile king-cups.