There was a field by my old house; we called it the green,
There were 3 large hills and for any child it was a picture
perfect scene,
The days I remember the most was when we played hide and
seek,
Sam and me ran straight for the Green and I spotted
something I never expected to see,
There were blue berry bushes everywhere, enough to fill our
sweaters 10 times over,
Mums face when she saw the state of my clothes but that
still didn’t stop us,
And I remember the day Simone’s mom was moving out and let
us play with some left over boxes,
We tore the cardboard into surfboards, picked the biggest
hill on the green and ran straight for the top of it,
It had rained the night before, so this was gonna be messy,
“It will make sliding down that much easier though” was how Sam
convinced me into it,
I balanced my cardboard surfboard on the edge and refused to
look down,
What’s the worst that could happen? Mom can’t ship me to India
now,
And so I skied the hills length on a sheet of flimsy card,
It was stupid, reckless even, but I had never laughed so
hard.
As my screams shifted to joy I thought, nothing could beat
this.
The green was everything to us; I dunno what we’d do without
it.
The new playground was cool, but the green would always
remain the best.
Could have skied the hills until the sun began to set.
A few years later I learnt to ride my bike on the very same
grass,
The green was the only place I felt safe because the fields
stopped me rolling too fast,
And not long later, I started my first dance academy,
Tap, ballet, jazz and gymnastics,
And Sam was trying to teach me all the moves, though she secretly
didn’t have a clue,
She claimed to be an ex-gymnastics champion at 10 you see,
that’s how she knew everything I was about to do,
And we would have cartwheeled on the green all day, but mum
soon called me in,
She laid dinner on the table and just as I was about to tuck
in…
“They’re taking the green down you know” she mumbled and
watched my smile fall,
They were taking down our hills, our blue berry bushes and fields;
they were taking it all,
The night before work was due to start, mum let us stay out
extra late,
Looked like every kid in the area had the same idea, they
were all over the place.
We all lay on memorable spots on the green, looking up at
the stars appreciating every moment of this,
Sharing stories about our adventures and regretting the many
other things we could have done,
Feeling sunrise creep closer and closer, knowing that in a
few days this would all be gone.
To everyone else it was just a bit of Green, for every child
in that district of Selly Oak it was everything.
And now stands a development of new state of the art houses,
They’re beautiful, but nothing compared to what was torn
down in the early 2000s
Went to visit it the other day, saw they took down our
favourite tree,
We carved our names in the trunk. Guess there’s nothing left
of little Sam and little me.
