With bare feet, we ran out
Broken brick, shards of glass
are what lay between the yellowed grass.
A bleeding foot, Never mind,
a grazed knee-
it never stopped our fantasies.
We played at being Queens
by perching on the swing.
We played shops with bottle lids from the bins.
We made dens from milk crates,
fought dragons in the weeds
we made the dog our noble steed.
We loved to climb!
scaling broken chairs,
over black rubbish bags without a care.
Mount old furniture
and sway on the ledges
of the age-old rotting fences.
No sense of danger
we'd catch wasps in cartons,
bury pennies in the garden,
collect nails and screws
Eat blackberries without washing them
and pick nettles by the stems.
But the stung fingers
the nettles and the wasps
caused a reaction and we had to stop.
Buried deep inside a foot
a shard of glass got stuck,
and the rubbish jungle was left in childhood
