Helicopter

A tomboy

always climbin trees and walls

scrobbin apples

robbin nests,

the likes that got herself into trouble

with the priests and the nuns and the guards

and the people who counted their apples.

She couldn’t care less

not a bit

for all the warnins

for all the hidins from her father,

even the scaldin print of my hand

across her back over and over

couldn’t stop her

doin what she wanted to do.

She just kept on climbin like a squirrel

a spider

a monkey

a great amusement

for the soldiers in the barracks

who used to joke she was just

what they needed in the army

with her long white legs

and her spindly fingers

and her hair cut short

and the way she could take

all the knocks and the falls,

like one of us the soldiers said

falls down and gets

straight back up again

dusts herself off and on

to the next thing

like one of us.

When the helicopters came

the commotion

the wind and the dust

like one of Moses’ plagues,

there was no end to the  pleadin:

Mammy Mammy Mammy

Mammy please Mammy please

Mammy I’ll be good forever

I’ll be good till I die

Mammy please mammy

please mammy please

so I let her off

I let her off for a ride with the soldiers

in the bastarin helicopter,

not once or twice

but maybe a dozen times

that one of them called to the door

for her,

a dozen helicopter rides

with soldiers

dressed up to play war in their armour,

a dozen times a little girl taken

away alone into the sky,

a dozen times

I let her be held in the shadows

in the belly of that roaring monster,

so hot so cruel so loud so dark

not even god himself

nor all the electronic eyes

staring from heaven could look

at what was goin on inside there.