Pooh Sticks.

I play ‘Pooh sticks’ in the darkness sometimes,
So I can’t see whether I’ve won or lost against the fates.

I play on a little river that cuts through the forest,
On the makeshift bridge my father balanced when I was 5.
I am 50 now.

Soon I will no longer be able to access our secret sanctuary.
I will no longer be able to find this inner peace,
Content in the way it makes me feel so childish, so perfect.

I’ll have to resort to being pushed on the swings
As my feeble legs buckle beneath me.
The breeze becoming my momentum; it used to be my husband.

The fates have caused so much pain in my life,
So many bad surprises and secrets unleashed.
But the good side, the joy,
I could have always accessed as it lay in the stick buried in bracken.

I throw my final branch with a ‘splosh’ in to the water.
Alas there is no current today.