Once off

On a burning childhood day,
in that corner of the field
where our small, slow river
meets the farm next to Malones',
where the bank of the river
swells into a little hill

- where once, years ago,
men bare to the waist
worked in the water,
laboured with shovels
and struggled to dredge
the riverbed choked
with reeds and weeds and silt
and in that corner
flung a mound of mud
that became the hill -

I pulled off my clothes
and ran down the slope
into the meadow.
But beneath the bare blue sky
a breeze touched my flesh
and whispered of danger:
What will they say if they see?

So I sneaked on my clothes
before I could be caught
and walked home wondering
at the daring of the deed.
I was eleven, maybe ten.
I did not do it again.

Published, 1995, in Navis.(Navis does not have its own website and may have ceased publication).