Nettle...lPLEASE READ MY POEM

The Road through the Nettles.

 

Summer nettles, head high, hid the path from view.

Each year we trod the way

anew.

The openness of winter, held, for us,

no interest.

The risk of stinging pains, necessary to our childish minds,

lent excitement to our games.

 

In spring this old allotment,

long disused,

came into life with tall yellow tulips,

discarded bulbs thrown out with garden weeds.

And flowering aconites,

green and gold,

grew on the common rubbish heap close to the track.

But best of all, this summer rite

of treading nettles

to the old brick wall,

relic of an ancient pigsty

in the corner

beneath the twisted tree.

 

Here we played for days on end until, suddenly bored,

moved on to the hollowed hedges,

or to the sandpits in the field,

or to the blackened willow

still in growth

despite its burnt out heart.

 

Here it was, I fell

rolling over, bare-armed in the elder-scented heat,

stung beyond the help of docken leaves.

 

Here too, my cousin

stamped life from a fledgling bird,

newly hatched,

while we girls watched in speechless shock.

Not for him the usual mindless cruelty of small boys,

tearing wings from butterflies, and tormenting frogs.

We never spoke of it again,

but now, long after his own death,

I wonder

if the path to self-destruction began, for him

on this summer

nettle day.

 

1st published in the Housman Society Prizewinners' Anthology 2002

and in Partners Poet Tree magazine, Feb 2005

 

Done