Do I have to? My last words of English.
Do I have to go to bed?
No amount of whinging swayed my mum. Sent to bed for the crime of being a boy. And perhaps for being a bit on the cheeky side.
The first hour I spent reading a Harry Potter book, I forgot which one now. Being high summer, I didn't have to resort to any such methods as using a tourch under the duvet. It wouldn't go completly dark for another hour.
Around 10 I heard my mum go to bed herself. I gave her another half hour. When I was sure she had to be asleep I quietly put my jeans back on, then tip-toed through the house and out the back door, the one that lead through the garden.
The garden.
Perhaps no one but a child knows what dangers lie in the garden. I should have known better.
My mum loved her plants. She filled her garden full of them. Peonies, poppies, roses, sunflowers, all sorts. The foxgloves reached over my head, as did the granny's bonnets.
That's why I didn't see them at first. They weren't much bigger than me. Maybe that's why I thought the first ones were kids, like me.
Hello, the first one said, from her seat under the rose bush. Only that hello wasn't in English.
I know that now.
And I understood her in the way that only a child can understand.
Her voice was soft. I almost mistook it for the wind stirring through the oak tree at the end of the garden. In the blue of twilight she looked like a little girl until I blinked, looked closer. Her skin was brown and rough, sort of like the rose, or the oak's bark. Her hair would have made the buzzard pair in the woods further back proud.
And her eyes. Like wolves' eyes, they were.
Wild.
She grinned, a wolf's grin. And she beconned. Away, further into the garden. A part I'd never seen before.
Then I saw the others. They were like her, some were different. Some were more like the flowers, some like wild things.
I went with them. Why, I'm not sure. Maybe it was becasue they seemed like me. It could have been because under that wild look, there was a gentle way. Maybe it was just because it would be like something Harry Potter would do.
It doesn't matter why, I went with them.
Into their world.
Skipping
wisdom of a child
the Fool.
6 comments:
"my son pulling his auntie's hair"_
a lovely photo that synchronizes so well with ur poem -
Skipping
wisdom of a child
the Fool..many thanks..
Spooky, kind of nasty too but a really good starting point.
Waving back at you from the equally sunny Neath valley!
:o)
..the photograph is full of love_love-is the only wisdom a child knows_seemingly the child is a "fool' to pull the hair-but everyone loves it..a strange folly..
Ah, the wisdom of children--often mistaken for foolishness. Thanks for participating.
Very nice senryu, we should follow more children when they are skipping. .. who knows where we would go.
This is so good. Thanks for posting this!
yellowed piece of paper
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