We were born in the same year

at the dawn of the brave new Elizabethan era.

Men-children fussed over by Little Weed,

often collapsing at their own jokes,

cackling, pots rattling, guffawing.  

 

The strange figure with squeaky voice

they occasionally met in the wood gave

me nightmares. Growing older

we smirked at the druggy connotations.

I saw them as dazed, strung-out, crawling

 

out of their horticultural crash pads after bad trips

or hangovers. Hanging loose. Some people

had no time for their games, nonsense talk;

maybe it was just a blokey thing.

They cavorted while the God-like, unseen man

 

who worked in their garden of Eden

took his lunch break. But did He,

like the Little House, know everything?

Everyone remembers a Bill and Ben.

Perhaps all those benders caught up with them.