3 boys

Three boys tired to sell me a Christmas tree for one pound,
As I walked along black ground in January dusk.
They spilled applaudable conviction,
Into the air with naive enthusiasm,
That strangers drew into their lungs in a breath.
Another world filtering into well known blood.
Contagious youth like summer grass under foot.

They sang grinning to me with lit up eyes,
Chanted to the neighbours loud and tuneless,
About their limp, fur raining pine tree,
The three dated videos,
A plastic landmark on the tarmac,
And the bunch of twenty pence rosemary,
Suspended carefree on a bollard like a lost scarf.

They radiated undiluted simplistic cheer,
Doing the aimless and the pointless,
That soon enough is rocked by age,
Left on the bench after practicality substitutions,
And poked by a ghost of an enemy called Notenough Time.

I didn’t buy the brown dry tree,
Unloved tapes or the savaged garden herb,
From the three boys of January dusk.
The coins in my pocket didn’t even turn,
But my pace had fallen from my shoes.
Left amongst the grit they sang upon,
Clawing at me to stay in this mirror of a world I grew from.

I wish I’d bought their old Christmas tree,
And rolled it down a hill.