The first trees I learned to climb
The first trees I learned to climb were mangroves;
Whole legions of them against the water line
Protected the lower bays from kids like me
Who only wanted to climb to the highest point
And swing their way down the newly broken branches.
And of course, being kids, we tried to start fires with them;
We brought down armfuls of snapped tinder,
Still green and damp and stinking of mud
And set up little camps by the rocks
To sun ourselves and watch the salt cake up and dry.
You can’t force fire but you can’t tell kids that either.
So we sat happy in smoke and soot,
And brushed the sand about the shore with half-burned branches,
Painting pictures out of ash for the next group to find.
I suppose it was in me already, must have been,
The gods and fears, the cold,
And looking back it’s as clear as anything.
But there’s a name for not knowing what you don’t know
And I had that in spades, it was a cape I wore
That some days I think still exists out there.
Maybe we buried it somewhere along that harbour,
Left it under rocks and dirt for safe keeping.
I like to imagine that the ash paintings were a beacon
And the next kid along found it all, and wore it, and it helped them.
Laurence Levy-Atkinson is a writer and poet based in Melbourne, Australia. His work has been featured by Cordite, Southerly, Australian Poetry Journal, Penumbra and Spineless Wonders, and anthologised for the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award, Ros Spencer Prize and the inaugural Oystercatcher Anthology.
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