After Vernon Scannell

 

      Learning to walk, begets learning to ride.

It was high time five-year-old William tried

to test out his bike on our back lawn,

Where the grass is soft, the terrain is flat.

What can go wrong in a garden like that?

 

Steady at first, William lost control,

Careering wildly to the flower bed,

Towards the blossoming scarlet roses

Where childlike screams were distinctly heard

And scarlet blood was readily shed.

 

I angrily built a funeral pyre,

And acrid smoke from burning rosewood,

Soon blackened up the shimm’ring sky.

The price of learning is that sparks will fly!

Though the cause of our pain must be concealed

                       Before the tears are dry, or the scars are healed.