APRIL 2007

A tomboy
always climbin trees and walls
scrobbin apples
robbin nests
the likes that got herself into trouble
with the priests and the nuns and the guards
and the people who counted their apples

She couldn't care less
not a bit
for all the warnings
for all the hidings from her father
even the scalding print of my hand
across her back over and over
couldn't stop her
doing what she wanted to do

She just kept on climbing like a squirrel
a spider
a monkey
a great amusement for the soldiers in the barracks
who used to joke she was just what they needed in the army
with her long white legs
and her spindly fingers
and her hair cut short
and the way she could take all the knocks and the falls

like one of us the soldiers said
falls down and gets
straight back up again
dusts herself off and on to the next thing
like one of us
when the helicopters came
the commotion
the wind and the dust like one of Moses' plagues
there was no end to the pleading
Mammy Mammy Mammy
Mammy please Mammy please Mammy
I'll be good forever
I'll be good till I die
Mammy please mammy please mammy please

so i let her off
i let her off for a ride with the soldiers
in the bastarin helicopter
not once or twice
but maybe a dozen times
that one of them called to the door for her
a dozen helicopter rides
with soldiers
dressed up to play war in their armour
a dozen times a little girl taken
away alone into the sky
a dozen times I let her
be held in the shadows
in the belly of that roaring monster

so hot
so cruel
so loud
so dark

not even one of all the electronic eyes
staring down from heaven
could look
at what was going on inside there