Marbles

Playing marbles in the avenue,
I loved their colours rolling on the path,
the spherical motion, the smack
when glass hit glass. We had fistfuls of them,
collections stashed in cloth bags
that we clutched like a treasure chest.
We exchanged and traded them.
Bluebottle blues for bloodshot reds.
It was part of the camaraderie of boys back then.
Kaleidoscopic, polished to the lustre of a gem,
sometimes they’d spill and fall,
pirouetting in all directions, slipping
through the grill and down the rain-shore.
A loss for which there was no consolation.

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