The Tender Next Minute

One time when we were kids my two younger brothers
And I were absorbed with ropes and climbing and what
Heights could be scaled by intrepid adventurers like us,
And we scaled the garage, and then we scaled a massive
Sweet gum, and then we tried to scale a neighbor's shed
But he glared and roared and we escaped into the hedge
Riven with tunnels and lairs that only we knew, and it's
That moment in the lurk of the hedge that I want to sing
Here for a moment. We huddled, panting, at the second
Turn, under the iglooish canopy of the forsythia bushes.
I had the rope, and my next brother had our kid brother,
Actually holding him by the hand, and we were smiling
And thrilled and frightened and sunlight rippled through
The tiny yellow flowers of the bushes and not far away
A robin inquired as to just what was all this hullabaloo?
You were there, too, remember, in your childhood cave,
The moist soil, the laboring beetles, the unwritten poem
Of the lost leaves, the duff, the thin spidery bones of old
Twigs. Once in a while we all stopped sprinting and just
Stared at what was there all around us, the wealth of dirt,
The sudden green feather about to adorn its second wild
Animal, the tender next minute waiting for us to emerge.

~ Brian Doyle