Sandcastles

As a child I didn’t build sandcastles.

It was as if any hope

they might be allowed to remain

seemed childish to me,

a degree of optimism

like sandcastles themselves

without foundation

in sandpits laid on by farmers

to amuse the labourers’ kids

and keep them from harm’s way,

well out of earshot

so the mothers wouldn’t be troubled

by grazed knees, bee stings

stomach cramps, hungry cries

guilty pangs piled high on guilty pangs.

I dug tunnels instead

as deep as the sandpit went

sometimes as long as my arm,

sometimes with two separate entrances

joining them unseen, under the sand.

It was something I did

that impressed the other kids,

it was somewhere I hid

the things I stole from them;

Mum used to say I was trying

to dig my way out, to escape,

making a joke of the fact

that she hadn’t the cash to buy

her son a bucket and spade.

Sandcastles has now been published in Volume 027 of Sarasvati

(c) 2012 Slush Poet