When in the summer fields we
chased young cows in circles
and hurdled fences free,
and thundering over the dewy grass they
made wild their domesticated bovine prayers,
fro-ing and to-ing as the bright and rainy day,
mooing and mowing their carpet acres green.
​
While a clean June sun soon muted by clouds,
reddened our cheeks and sweated our brows,
no briar nor wire barb could stop our bush wading
speed, yet clung by cleavers we too became
weeds, sprouting up fresh and youthful,
wherever there was space to do so.
​
And then, where the shallow ponds frogs vaulted
our paws and eluded our jugs and buckets,
we crossed our lilly bawn butters bloom
and counted budding flowers
vivid under our innocent noon.
​
Spadeless we tunnelled the winds of the whins,
where wolves had been and foxes were,
here amongst our bed of thorns we carried
black clouds of jackdaws on our eyes
and bottled their curdled crack caws in our ears.
​
But with our bellies bleating for bread and butter,
we lit the reeds and boggy water with our heels,
never turning to consider the sodden inferno that
burned splashing over the grazing, preserving
what young life would and what maturity could not.
So when our innocence fell there in the bog, we knew
it would never rot.