Northern Skies

They walked by.
The decent folk.
Curious fascination
fed their disgust
of us.
Thirteen and fourteen year olds,
condemned,
damned to be digits,
debated statistics
in some university’s social survey.

We sat on creaking swings,
faking bravado.
The cider helped.
Deciphered into dumpy,
plastic bottles.
We had no choice
but to swallow
the shallow fibre
of our lives,
watching the shadowy demons
of childhood hopes
empty into
the depths of distant,
terraced chimneys.

Delinquent, defiant,
spliff smoking fiends,
we didn’t hold our breath
or parade our faded hopes
of Dads returning any time soon,
or Mums even noticing
they were gone. Absent
themselves in the haze
of crack pipes and vodka suppers.

We were just the apprentices,
keeping the swings warm
for the next exhibits
showing decent folk
how worthy they were
and how much better they lived
under grey, northern skies.