WILDERNESS CAMP

A barely setting sun rises, pink flecking little
waves that lap on birch-backed beach, whose coarse
pink grains pain pink greenhorns’ feet.
Bleary-eyed leader blows reveille, tents grumble
but boys emerge and plunge their bedwarm bodies
in water cold as diamond’s fire.
Downy, goosepimpled limbs wait in line for porridge.

Boys made to march through swamps where leeches dwell.
Boys forced to ford boulder-bottomed streams,
numbed feet feeling for footholds
in the icy, pulling torrent.
Boys ordered to climb rugged rockfaces,
loose stones for slips and slides that could break
bones, and to run with leg-stretching strides
down the smoother slope the other side
that takes them home.

Boys doing pushups, punishment not minded,
muscles straining ’neath sun-pinked skin
until they’re paining and made to start again.
Sweaty boys, boots a-stinking,
dirty boys, logs scratched and scabbing
exhausted boys, resting sprawled,
waiting for beans and bacon and orange-flavoured Tang.

Campfire circus, memory machine
with bawdy songs and wieners.
Lights Out, whispers in the night
… a time for secrets, and sleep.

ROBIN’S RUDE SONGS AND POEMS, Robin Sharpe, Kalayaan Publications, 1990