Back in the time of crows
Mrs Hargreaves swept her yard
until the ground was shiny black
packed hard and didn’t dare to crack
beneath her millet boom.
Outside her back door
fire logs haphazard stacked
and from within their timber veins
velvet witchetys on crumbling lines
soft sacrifices to her hearth, in hiding.
Scarlet poppies vied with suede
coxcombs along a straight
cemented path, as sickly privets
fled the tautened diamond
wire panes that twanged
to trails of finger fenceline play.
Her children blundered sockless in their canvas shoes
a smell of rotting apricots and ripened veg.
But in their street, cocky knights of earth and beast,
no one dared gainsay their craft.
We, tidily enthralled to bursting,
fashioned shanghais in their train
to ping ball bearings at the crows.
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