The Return Of The Vandal Poem by Timmy Angel Naylor

There was a gamekeeper's cottage in Wiseholme Wood.
Nestled in a clearing,
Of warm red brick and rosemary tile.
And ringed by a slowly waving and cheering throng
Of trees and bracken.
A place to remember
Then to forget
Then remember again
And run past in breathless intrigue.
There was a snake
And a well
And a pretty girl pressed flowers
In the old wooden bus there.
Then she was gone
And the house was empty.

With sly, stealthy step
And heart-pounding intent
The vandal came.
Kicking the warm red walls in joyful destruction.
A rapture of broken glass.
An ecstasy of flying tiles.
The snake was cast in the well,
The departed girl now a mocking void
Into which he could only scream profanities
Through his orgy of Smash! Bash! Trash!

And then he was gone
Amid the throng of trees and bracken
Now petrified and silent.

A silence slowly melted
By a distressed songbird
Somewhere distant,
The first faint herald of a dawning heartbreak.
And then the cottage was gone.

Years later the vandal returned.
Drawn to that spot down a strange familier road.
He knelt, curious and perplexed.
Then, scooping the earth
With aged and finally care-worn hands,
Where stray bricks had crumbled
And fused forever with the bluebell's dust,
He felt, trickling through his fingers,
The first inklings of grief.

Remember that cottage.
Remember the snake,
The well,
And the pretty girl.
And remember that long ago an early workman sat on his wagon
And waited for mates,
To build that cottage in the wood,
His pipe- smoke curling upwards
In the cold morning air.
The clearing seemed bright
And full of opportunity,
Like the day.