Three Poems

Running

from Cuckoo Pen past Aycote farm and the hedge
behind which we'd play with the Wilkins boys,
Stephen, twelve, swift runner at secondary modern
in Cirencester - 'Do you do Latin?' 'Mebbe' -
David, seventeen, occasionally
ducking and diving through the copse by their cottage,
on his wide shoulders their little sister
and my brother, once not running rather
hobbling just after circumcision, his bandage
unravelling from under one leg of his short trousers;

so running away from him up the lane
past the conifers beyond, left at the post box
on to a short slope until a signpost,
so left again towards Woodmancote
to the stile and the path across the meadow
...