TREE CLIMBING
At the back of the house on wasteland
past the allotments, in a thicket
of elder and hawthorn was an ash-tree
on a chalk bank
where a path led up to a clearing,
our camp. There was easy climbing
into its branches, it was perfect
for swinging on,
and the dead shoots at the base of the trunk
could be snapped off and peeled:
their dry pith made spongey
sweet cigars.
Smoking for seven-year-olds,
like seed-gathering or stone-throwing,
was obligatory as fire-worship,
arrow-making,
or scrounging allotment potatoes
for roasting in ashes. Tribal demands
for territory, raids into gardens,
ritual violence,
and worship of the Great Goddess -
if we could find the right pictures -
all fade with summer evenings where
hose-pipes splutter
and die. How far, the ground below
lost in complications of foliage,
he climbs with a wave down to friends
or anxious parents
as he feels the sprung shape of the tree
sway with his weight, as branches
slip from reach and he can’t come down,
that ghostly boy.
