Stafford Afternoons

Only there, the afternoons could suddenly pause
and when I looked up from lacing my shoe
a long road held no one, the gardens were empty,
an ice-cream van chimed and dwindled away.

On the motorway bridge, I waved at the windscreens
oddly hurt by the blurred waves back, the speed.
So I let a horse in the noisy field sponge at my palm
and invented, in colour, a vivid lie for us both.

In a cul-de-sac a strange boy threw a stone.
I crawled through a hedge into long grass
at the edge of a small wood, lonely and thrilled.
The green silence gulped once and swallowed me whole.

I knew it was dangerous, the way the trees
drew sly faces from light and shade, the wood
let out its sticky breath on the back of my neck
and flowering nettles gathered spit in their throats.

Too late. Touch said the long haired man
who stood, legs apart, by a silver birch,
with a living, purple root in his hand. The sight
made sound rush back; birds, a distant lawnmower,

his hoarse, frightful endearments as I backed away
and ran all the way home; into a game
where children scattered and shrieked
and time fell from the sky like a red ball.