Boys

(i)
We were a well-armed gang.
Average age: ten.
We marched over fields
and through woods
and by rivers
looking for creatures to kill.
We’d have our weapons with us
- catapults, air rifles -
and slaughter water rats, moorhens,
sparrows, starlings, blackbirds, wrens…
anything that flew, scuttled, swam.

Boys will be boys!
If I could
I’d rewrite that phase of childhood.

(ii)
I nearly had a friend’s eye out.
He was crouched down
by the water’s edge
looking for fish.
I aimed to give him a surprise
and catapulted a pebble at the water
but missed the slow
shallow
river
completely
and hit him on the cheek,
just below
the left eye.

Such stupidity!

My heart thumps,
even today,
thinking about what might have been.

(iii)
I’m laughing now. Remembering
Anthony Rollitt
who wanted to find out
just how powerful his new .22
air rifle really was.
He shot himself
in the foot
- his welly!
The pellet didn’t penetrate
the boot
but boy did he jump
and yelp
then limped all the way home.
Idiot.

Goodness knows
what his mother had to say.
She was a woman
with a temper.
But that’s another story.