Intruders

The boys crouch high in the illicit branches,

Sun on nude thighs, eyes sharp as broken glass;

To climb our trees, they first have climbed our fences;

The fern-fronds swish in menace as I pass.

Wild, rodent ravagers, they crouch in hay,

Then, as I kick the barn-door, skim a rafter.

Pursue them here, they'll run another way,

The tangled hollow echoing to their laughter.

A greenhouse pane is shattered and a gourd

Lolls, green and pulpy, from its strangled neck.

No vagrant cur has left that glistening turd

Set down before me on the sunlit track.

Their feral odour coils around the hall,

The rug far down the passage shows a spoor,

The mirror starts to tremble to its fall,

Five fingers spread like scorch-marks on the door.

But once inside the bedroom, all remains

Just as it always was, clean, ordered, bare;

While each beleaguered, baffled heart-beat strains

To catch the first, last sound of no one there.