Guide Camp

The smell of clothes against canvas

Could have been paint, only it wasn’t

Just eager teen-dripping faces

Waiting for dark – the cover of night

-          That gauze soaked with ointment.

Light lingered like a hand distracted

Starting to unravel, plaits

Thick with sweat, once bound by mother

Hair fell like a token of design.

Or art.

I was thirteen then, we were

For we – it felt collective

Trembling hot

And an afternoon assembling tents

Idle chatter working with our tongues.

The summer threaded through my shirt

With every dig, and drag, and

Draw

Of breath, like a lover to confess

If life is fresh,

Then this is raw.

Raw the wet and glittering eyes

In their nervous gestures round the flames

Where girls smile and society sleeps

No one to curse the childish thirst for games.

Perhaps it was that clinging taste

Of Ribena, rinsed beyond repair

The singe of food’s metallic scrape

Between chapped lips and unwashed hair.

But it was warmth

The warmth of action, for itself

I seldom since

Have felt, for now the hands are clocked

The camp is watched

The fire is consequence.