The Wall

It ran across the end of Afton Street,
The boundary of my world at five.
Beyond, another country: ships, and cranes, and sky.
While girls played intricate, intense games of house -
Cooking, cleaning, scolding naughty dolls -
We boys took part in active, manly games,
Tore down the street and leapt up at the wall,
Clawed fingers clutching for the top.
A pull, a heave, a scrape of tortured shoes,
And you were up astride the parapet,
And from your airy seat
You looked out over weeds and railway lines,
And further, to the ships and cranes and sky.

Years later, I drove back north and visited the wall.
The street was empty, neat, no kids,
The wall, though barely chest-high now,
Is topped off by a wire fence much higher than itself.
They needn't have bothered;
Today, grown-up, I never run, I walk,
And in my landscape, walls remain unclimbed.