Brook Hill
There’s a wall that stands
on the corner of Brook Hill, near the old stores that shut up shop
a few years back.
Its drystone greying-green with little lichen islands and
moss where the mortar used to be
slabs where we used to sit
Dan and I and occasionally others
under the trees growing out of someone’s back garden
trading stories, penny sweets, Lostprophets songs via Bluetooth,
summer sun breaking the leaves above our heads
dripping its way down past Wrose, across the valley.
And if those stones could speak
they’d tell all the secrets we’d shared as kids. Say something
about the girls we used to talk about, friends we couldn’t’ve lived without
shout lyrics to songs we wouldn’t remember now,
something
something to get someone to sit and spend a minute
sipping a melting ice-pop before
all the leaves shift to brown and the sky to grey and
one year when summer gave way to autumn
did we know we wouldn’t sit there again,
sharing
DRYSTONE. 