Playground 1952

by Robin Munro

We are playing.  We are talking.
Though talking, when you’re five, is playing too.

My eyes are among silver movements I know as seagulls

Some one (Barry? Ian? only names now)
some one my size anyway
says ‘there’s a bomber’.
He’s watching a plane, and so must I.
Much greyer than silver, and far too near.

I fear things I don’t know.

I hoard words, especially doing words.
I hope bomber is a thing word
though it has a doing sound.

I shove it down into my vocabulary
to fester there. I forget how we met

until a too fast forwarded 2022
when I am aware how far more real they are, the new words,
creeping into the children of Kyiv.