(from a collection entitled Life Without Buildings)
When life got too loud - money men came knocking, food was low, ill feelings hung in the air or negative vibes dominated the energy fields -
We'd head off up to the highland ox-bow hidden from the vale towns by a ramshackle ridge of low slung thickets and the sycamore we called Old Man's Watch
We'd sit in untidy shapes on the eastern banks - the 'shoreline' and blow tunes into the skies or bleat long-fallen and diluted weary tales of made up situations
Marney was best at that
We'd never get bored and sometimes, usually when the clouds sat low enough to breath against, ghost stories would gather and make sounds that felt real
Real enough to scare our giggles into shrills of disbelief and tickle our insides with dead people
Tree shadows grew on the western climbs so that by late evening, backed by a cold brown sun, they'd look like enemy armies
Once we all heard singing coming from the gardeners cottage over at Wendell Heights even though we all agreed it was impossible
That old turreted pile was once an Edwardian gentry house and hadn't seen life since it took a V2 from Hitler in the forties
It had no floor boards or roof
How could anyone be in amongst all that ?
But we heard them and they sang freely and in the style of old beauty
A tune from another time
It made me think of stain glass windows, cast iron radiators and flecks of dust that just sit timeless and bolt upright in shafts of morning sunlight channelled through filthy panes
A collection of the very last remnants of dying eras
Paul's older brother and Dyson Shankhouse were show-offs and used to hike over the prairie steps as far as the estuary
They carved out this tidy niche in daredevil capers until they came up close on a troop of thin hungry humans, some with green hair, who came bowling out of one of the ship wrecked hulls where mum said sniffers went to kill their brains and remove the life from behind their eyes
They scarpered all the way back shaking and we caught them dead white faced, Dyson crying and missing a shoe, long balls of snot on his collar
That was the end of courage
We never laughed as much
Hard and serious and violent as the northern storms
We were young and back before money or fear we would look without thinking and listen without judging
Poor as beggars and wealthy as kings, we had nothing yet we had it all
What price to live just one day like that again ?
If you could steal memories the best felons on earth would have long since made off with my days up on Stick River Lake
When life got too loud - money men came knocking, food was low, ill feelings hung in the air or negative vibes dominated the energy fields -
We'd head off up to the highland ox-bow hidden from the vale towns by a ramshackle ridge of low slung thickets and the sycamore we called Old Man's Watch
We'd sit in untidy shapes on the eastern banks - the 'shoreline' and blow tunes into the skies or bleat long-fallen and diluted weary tales of made up situations
Marney was best at that
We'd never get bored and sometimes, usually when the clouds sat low enough to breath against, ghost stories would gather and make sounds that felt real
Real enough to scare our giggles into shrills of disbelief and tickle our insides with dead people
Tree shadows grew on the western climbs so that by late evening, backed by a cold brown sun, they'd look like enemy armies
Once we all heard singing coming from the gardeners cottage over at Wendell Heights even though we all agreed it was impossible
That old turreted pile was once an Edwardian gentry house and hadn't seen life since it took a V2 from Hitler in the forties
It had no floor boards or roof
How could anyone be in amongst all that ?
But we heard them and they sang freely and in the style of old beauty
A tune from another time
It made me think of stain glass windows, cast iron radiators and flecks of dust that just sit timeless and bolt upright in shafts of morning sunlight channelled through filthy panes
A collection of the very last remnants of dying eras
Paul's older brother and Dyson Shankhouse were show-offs and used to hike over the prairie steps as far as the estuary
They carved out this tidy niche in daredevil capers until they came up close on a troop of thin hungry humans, some with green hair, who came bowling out of one of the ship wrecked hulls where mum said sniffers went to kill their brains and remove the life from behind their eyes
They scarpered all the way back shaking and we caught them dead white faced, Dyson crying and missing a shoe, long balls of snot on his collar
That was the end of courage
We never laughed as much
Hard and serious and violent as the northern storms
We were young and back before money or fear we would look without thinking and listen without judging
Poor as beggars and wealthy as kings, we had nothing yet we had it all
What price to live just one day like that again ?
If you could steal memories the best felons on earth would have long since made off with my days up on Stick River Lake
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