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Playground
Playground - Adrian Mitchell
This poem was written durting the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Playground
dark brown eyes
scanning dusty tarmac
a boy on a swing
head down
mouth humming
a boy swinging intensely
before dusk he must go
to his grandmother’s house
on the edge of the city
alone on a swing
thinking on a swing
a boy
his mother will stay home
she won’t go to the shelter
people here are afraid of shelters
they remember last time
the chains of the swing
they clank they creak
the boy’s head fills
with explosions
a boy on a swing
from The Shadow Knows - Poems 2000-2003 (Bloodaxe, 2004), copyright © Adrian Mitchell 2004, used by permission of the authors Estate