Mike Barlow
The Rope Walk
was a cinder path between a high brick wall
and a no-man's-land of bramble;
wooden posts at each end stopped
neither bikes nor horses, but forced you
through the puddles either side.
It was a short-cut to friends on The Estate,
the place we met to share a fag, plan dares.
Rough kids from Manor School would stone us
and middle-aged women dogsarse their lips,
throw sidelong glances as we passed.
On dark November evenings lurking voices
sprang suddenly behind the glow of cigarettes.
And once my sister came back home
white faced and tearful when a stranger in a mac
had forced her hand down in his pocket.
Though out of bounds since then we still met there,
thought, more often than we dared admit,
of what she'd touched, kept watch;
but none of us could work out how
you told one kind of stranger from another.
Page(s) 13
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