Until very recently a boy lived upstairs with his mother

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There are, in cloistered, warring times, some odd, uncertain places. I say this because I know a few. Not many, mind, and they are easily unnoticed

 

Within their bounds, 

if you find them, 

you can run until your feet turn to putty

Something in the air, 

the stone and shadow, 

tells you all will be well with the world 

even when all is very clearly not 

It is a wild, unfathomable freedom

And your gut, your very marrow, 

swells with a deep 

and 

earthen 

gratitude

 

There is one such point in a park that I know where the path heads straight down a short slope and through a tunnel. The tunnel has a number and the railway line above it has a name. The trains pass overhead in such a wide and gently curving line that they describe a complete horizon. You turn with them as they travel south to the station on its bridges, or north to where the buildings all touch sides 

And 

as you do, 

everything in you 

breathes 

that bit easier

 

This is where the trees whisper and the path fades into the tall grass. Where the apples grow on the apple tree branches and the old woman sings her mournful songs in the echo. This is where the woman in the headscarf wheels herself backwards, her right foot outstretched and her left jabbing the ground with all her might, propelling her wheelchair into the morning. This is where the ground bees have colonised the swing mound, and the small boy’s mother has left him alone in the sandpit. This is where they found a dead bird, 

an opened umbrella, 

a clay pipe, 

a broken kite 

and a stone shaped like a bean, 

there, behind the public toilets. 

This is where they did handstands in the clover, 

where she put one foot in front of the other, 

where he lay in the wet grass, 

where the mist hovered thick and white above the frozen ground and the trees stood tall and still 

and watchful

 

This is where they spoke their minds, where they placed their bets, where they made amends, where they drank 

and spat rhymes 

and dribbled balls 

and shot hoops 

and ran thick as thieves, four abreast and twenty deep, running as God intended, running as only they could run in the din and the clamour, with not a little hesitation, with both cowardice and grace, but still and on and further, a race sometimes to the death, and usually against time, 

but mostly just to run

 

You on pedals blud? 

 

This is where we learned to see