Breaking Down Walls

When we were kids

I used to go to my friend Johnny’s

In order to lose ourselves amongst his mother’s meadow-like garden

Round the back of the house

That the university let them live in

As long as Johnny’s mam worked

On the campus there.

Endless days spilt into weeks spilt into months

Spent in the abandonment which summer and childhood

Can afford

And I ceased to think of that house, with its great,

Green expanse on all sides

As anything other than my own.

One particularly sickly-sweet, sweaty day

Andy (Johnny’s brother) came running, telling tales of

An ancient brick wall that he’d found

Behind some bushes, in a far-flung,

Lesser-explored corner of the meadow

Which looked like, with a little persuasion

Would probably just fucking fall o’er

Which, of course, was all the information we needed.

Streaking across the long grass,

in usual formation (Johnny first/ me/ Andy trailing a little behind)

Leaping over logs and through tangleweed

Andy shouting clipped directions from behind

We arrived, breathless, at the decrepit, redbrick antiquity

Sagging and bowing under its own weight

And decades worth of weathered, crumbling mortar.

Stopping only to draw breath and take in

The potential for juvenile destruction, then

Grabbing a fallen tree limb

Between the three of us

And, wielding that rudimentary battering ram

Joyously and dementedly, aiming that sucker

Into the heart of the most prominent bulge

And pounding her in

Over and over again

Whooping with exhaustion, splinters, blisters

And brick dust rising up

All around our ears.

We didn’t hear the shouts from beyond the wall

Over the racket we were busy making

The shrieks increasing with each fallen brick

A cacophony of abandonment and destruction

As the swelling cement finally gave up

and we went spilling through the fresh hole

Battering ram and all

A shower of splintering wood, broken stone and young limbs

Clattering in upon a well-to-do looking family

Sitting round a picnic table

Staring aghast at the point of commotion

And the place where 
their garden wall used to be.