The tree stood at the top of North Junction.
Our special playing place,
someone, I never knew who
had fixed a thick rope around a stout branch.
The rope dangled down
with a big knot tied at the end.
It was our swinging tree
but today there he was,
a big kid
a stranger
swinging from our tree.
He wouldn’t let us on,
he went on swinging
daring us with his eyes
and a sly grin to challenge us.
There was a long silence
A Stand off…
I held a knobbly stick in my hand
not intended for a weapon,
a stick to swipe at the hedgerows
as I walked.
I held it to the ground casual like,
the red ants began to march
single file along it’s length
After a while I lifted the stick
…oh so slowly and gently touched
the big kid’s leg with it.
The ants seemed to like the taste
of the big kid’s leg
but the big kid howled
jumped to the ground
dancing a macabre rhythm.
We got our swing back…
Comments
jennifer | February 25, 2009 - 19:02
Oooh, good narrative poem. Really like the image conjured in the mind by 'dancing a macabre rhythm'.
I think you need to swap a few of those commas for semi-colons (to know where they fit, consider where you could put a full stop, but not quite - think of them as a cross between a comma and a full stop).
Ok, I will stop being an English teacher now!
J x
Silver Spun Sand | February 26, 2009 - 18:12
Another lovely snippet from your childhood, dear Val. I think most of us can identify with the situation here ... But red ants? Yuk!! Boy, do they bite as I know by experience when I dug up an old tree root once:-)
Tina X