First Steps #WATTYS2016

Running Shadows

I'm sat here,
Surrounded by trees and their children, the blades of grass.
Everything is still but for the grass moving gently in a breeze barely touching the skin,
Their shadows tumble back and forth,
All moving at the same time yet independently of one another.

As one bird whistles, another replies,
A chorus of communication.
The weeds grow with the flowers but do not mar the landscape,
For up here they are not weeds
But plants like all the others.

I kicked a cigarette butt into the grass but it bounced back.
I tried again, but the same thing happened.

Today is a very lazy day, the sun soaking the landscape, making it harder for time to move,
And so seconds
Turn into minutes
And minutes
Into hours.

The only evidence of man is the dry stone wall and the faint whir of life in the distant traffic,
People getting on with their days.
Places to go, people to see,
As they say.

The birds continue to chat.
I'm enjoying it as peaceful but one of them could be telling another bird that they're pregnant.
Who knows, maybe birds can have really bad days.

All of this makes me think of those slow primary school days,
Where an entire lunchtime could be spent playing tig,
Or tag.
No one ever decided on an official name for that game.

The days of kiss chase,
Of feigning lack of interest but at the same time, running at the slowest fast pace you can.
The fuss of lining up on the playground when the bell sounded.
The days where sweat didn't seem to smell, ice cream never seemed to stay frozen and,
For that one kid in every class,
Noses never seemed to stop running.
Running like us in the last week of primary school, playing manhunt.

We were allowed to play on the little forest around the playground, this one time.
Consequently, we lost three men in the first five minutes. Sent into the nurse to receive seemingly nothing of actual use. Hayfever is heartless.

I was bursting through the undergrowth panting like a dog and feeling like I was as fast as one,
Evading hands and branches, down to the last three and with no plans of stopping.
I hid.
Behind one of the trees, I secretly caught my breath
As silently as possible,
Four enemies running past unknowingly.