I was fortunate to grow up on the outskirts of the city of Belfast, adjacent to woodland and meadows, in an age when children played outdoors and disappeared on 'adventures' for hours on end without causing particular concern to their parents.
It was a time in our social history that seems barely imaginable now. We had no television, no social media, no smartphones and the fields we played in were free of pesticides and alive with the sound of grasshopper and bee. We'd catch sticklebacks in the small streams and, occasionally, glimpse the amber pelt of a hunting fox slipping through woodland at dusk.
Those woods, accessed from the back of my friend's house, were a place of magic. Each tree was a signpost or meeting place and our 'dens' were built then destroyed, like empires of old, as rival groups of eager, short-trousered boys staked out their respective territories.
All that has gone now. A walk through those same woods a decade ago brought nothing but an overwhelming sense of sadness for a vanished childhood.
THE SWING
As we launch out, the air feels clean,
the wooden swing, a pendulum
divining or recording time,
as sunlight stabs, pure platinum,
through woodland chestnut, cedar, lime,
into our playground, softly green.
It takes our joint weight on taut ropes
as we, in tandem, drive it on,
gathering momentum, we rise:
you grip the seat I brace upon
with boots, knees, adolescent thighs
and boundless, adolescent hopes.
The swing is like a storm-tossed boat,
the wood’s a bold kaleidoscope
of light, leaf patterns, soaring dreams.
I shout within the cradle-ropes,
the sound extinguishing your screams.
Free from confining earth, we float.
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