The half smoked cheroot you dropped and trampled underfoot
was like the
time you stopped and walked all over me
or was it time that stopped?
was it I that dropped
off the climbing frame and cut my leg?
and begged you not to go but you went anyway
and we didn't play together any more.

Then twenty years on when the pain of you was still as fresh as if someone had painted it in everlast and we all know those things that shouldn't last but some do.
that was how and when time flew
I followed you again as if back on the climbing frame and aching for a cut or two
you
just smoked a pack and blew the smoke in curling blue
and with the picture cards that posted on the books we knew
we played that childish trick or treat
you tricked
and I never got the treat
but if I meet you twenty years from now
I know that I will find somehow
the match to light your cigarette
the flame to make you want to get
another climb
two children in the frame.