A STORY FROM CHILDHOOD


A fire has been started, embarrassingly
on the railway banking, by someone
I’ve grown up with. I wish it was an
accident or a wilful passing stranger, but  

it’s my childhood friend and neighbour

who loves the smell of burning, the swirling
smoke and embers, the glorious arrival

of the fire-fighters, with their heavy boots
and jackets, the canary yellow helmets, the
choreographed unraveling of the hoses,
the noise they make and breathless running.

The certainty of purpose. To be part of this

is something. That’s how he explained it.  

I never told on him, neither to the police
or to my parents, who came out to watch
the flames, engulfing almost everything

and then suddenly extinguished. My friend
is dead and I believe the cause was natural.

He will probably be cremated
but nowadays, so is everyone

unless you’re Jimmy Carter
Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan