Around the backs of houses:
Overgrowth cloaked a
Horde of little rascals with
Pockets full of pennies.

Some were almost as tall as the
Highest stalks and jumped
Once a minute to gauge the number
Of silly long strides left to spring from.

Eyes fixed forwards, soldiering
On to the treeline and then just
Beyond - Through the ditch and
Brambles, emerging onto stones:

Ten feet towered with a
Steep ascent as a clear warning
Raptly ignored by the imps --
The chasers of thrills and stories

And melted misshapen metal -
Wherein lies the innocence of their
Treacherous endeavors. Those
Pennies would return mangled and bent

Enough to weave a tale of valiance
And near-death peril so captivating
It couldn't possibly be spun;
For in your hand you held a token.

"The world vibrated and ear drums
Exploded, running to cover from
The screaming, steaming demon:
Dublin to Belfast express!"
They would say.

.
Let's go searching.
With hand over heart to
Set the pace, you can guide our
Way through goosebumps. We'll search
Close and thin for meaning
In fears we're yet to shed.

Let's go falling.
We'll feel fuzzy headed
When the bough breaks
With a crisp crunch and
We'll leave to chance
Whose fall needs fixing.

Let's go shaking.
We'll let blurry white stars
Propagate in petri dish
Pupils; A shudder
At the brink with
Nails buried deep.

Let's go dreaming
Dreams of finding
Soft sands stretched limitless:
A place to land
Where respite paints
Over sanguine lips now still.
.

A droplet in a cave echoes the
impact that I've made;
A life of dribbled
lime it takes
to lay this
path of
mine.

.

As
dark
throbbing
waves wash
out the resonance
I crave - That steady, stoic
drop too forms the biding end atop.

For the lucky, a million chances are granted
before their first day sleeps.
Unnoticed - mostly unspoken to the
screaming, restless, 'just wont settle' infants -
they are to be carried on the shoulders of  
protectors and handed down as time presents.

The chance to grow attached to that first teddy-bear.
The one in the attic with just one eye and
an off-white coat of the softest fur;
It holds all the heat from the nights you
nuzzled, before your imagination was clipped;

To wear your first little booties and
plod your first steps holding fingertips sky high;

To run headlong into the edge of a table
you could fit under but a day before;

To cry with your face scrunched up
and your eyes closed, mouth hanging ajar, after
falling from your bike;

And the chance to be embraced and told it will all
be okay by those same protectors, then handed another chance
with one less stabilizer.

Now let's replace the embrace with a thought -
For her;

Her protectors couldn't carry her chances.

When she awoke and filled her lungs
the chances handed down were a cold plastic bag and a
chance encounter with a passer by on the Steelstown Road:

Her chance at a first day, unnamed.

Given half a chance I would give her all of mine.