Lessons in life part 12.....Children of the Willows

The Brook looks good
without the detergent
foaming from the factory upstream,
it closed its gates in the eighties
but the fish never came back.
It's now called a linear park
but I can still see its heart beating.

I can feel the asthmatic cold
of white canvas tents,
raw black spuds hot handed
from the edge of its fires.

clean pathways weave
where we once dug dens,
I walk alone in the presence of friends
and pick out a spot
to sit and smoke myself to ash.
The spiked collars of hard to cross pipes
remind me of punks too drunk to stand.

I place a hand to the rough bark
of a tree that taught me to fly
the sandstone slab looks small
as retrace my take off.

Houses have been built
over most of the old routes,
but I know another way round,
everything is denser, undergrowth
heavier than I imagined,
but then the scent of trampled Jewel Weed
burst across fifty years
and all I can do is smile.