Today I am counting sheep.
One to eighteen in a
green field. Tomorrow
it will be Autumn and,
as Victorians did (and
the Edwardians after)
I will be counting leaves
falling
fading green, yellow
brown and drop. If I
could find a conker tree
somewhere, I'd collect,
bake, vinegar-soak and
bash. Cracking knuckles.
Do children still do that? Break
skin to score victory? Do they
swish and run through piled
earthy smelling leaves? Or rattle
sticks wet with rain-sweat against
railings put up by those
Victorians and Edwardians?
An hour or so after leaving
conker smashing,
leaf swishing,
stick rattling,
childhood
I saw what lay beyond.
Damp and steaming gardens.
Lawns framed by trees still
trembling after the last rain
to fall an eon ago. Misted
windows, with you woz ere
carefully traced on their panes,
set into bricked, pebble-dashed
and public toilet pink walls.
Who chose pink!
Disgusted by bad taste and
unable to return to
conker-leaf-stick
childhood, I resorted
to counting one field of
eighteen sheep and
one forest of infinite leaves.
© Berenice Dunford 2005
