On Childhood Days and Ways

On Childhood Days & Ways

I remember
My Swallows and Amazon days.
Long days
When our imaginations
Took us to places
Where we could never be found.
Where parents could never intrude
And bubbles didn’t burst.

I remember long hot days
When our energy was spent damming a stream
For no purpose
But the stream was there
And that’s what you did.

There were wet gloomy days
When we sat in dark dens
And whispered secrets to each other
Bending truth with fiction and fantasy.
And inventing codes,
Which could not be cracked,
To ask who would you kiss?
Who do you love?

I remember crisp cold days
When we kicked up russet coloured leaves
Revealing a treasure-trove
Of fat conkers,
Which would later split when strung.

There were days when we climbed trees
To see our whole world
Laid out before us,
A patchwork of fields
Embroidered with houses
And with ribbons of roads.
Our domain seemed vast
And we could not conceive
Of straying past its assumed boundaries,
Nor of what lay in wait beyond.

Now I watch you
With your Swallows and Amazons ways.
Creating adventure
In the woods
And cars from cardboard boxes.
Childhood days and
Childhood ways unchanging.