Issue 7:
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Thomas Ollerhead
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Only The Milestones Remembered, 1956
As boys, we carried sticks and roamed at random
Ranging far and into meadows newly mown
Rolled on grasses dried in summer sun.
Once, we chased a moorhen from its reeds
And searched determined for its eggs
To blow and treasure in a schoolboy way,
And frogs, easier to catch and hold
With head protruding cupped in hand
Were teased and savaged without thought.
Endless lanes and fields of standing corn,
To tramp and trample in our non-disruptive way
Were ours to use as free and never feel the pain
One winter's day, huddled in a doorway
At a house's back we came upon a group
Of black-shawled women and learned that
Someone there had lost a child no older
Than ourselves, and stayed,
For death was fascination yet to wound
And being silenced by a cutting look
The dead child's name as though a game.
Learning later that a gentle man we knew
Had been detained and murder was a thing
That reached beyond our make-believe
To pluck at random or perhaps the preordained
For all who knew to read.
~Thomas Ollerhead
Thomas Ollerhead is a consultant engineer currently working in Egypt. When not working abroad, he lives in a small village near Chester, England, with his wife and daughter. He has had several poems and short stories published on the web. Email.
© 2001 by Thomas Ollerhead. All Rights Reserved.
© 2000-2002 by Cayuse Press. All Rights Reserved.
This page updated April 30, 2002.