When James jammed the jimmy between the planks
I knew something had changed.
Only the stumps of the uprights remained,
the rest of the play house
now firewood stacked like a funeral pyre.
No longer toddlers, the two boys
wield the tools of assemblage and demolition,
stand back to view their labour's worth
much like their grandfathers would have done –
men who built for themselves,
who knew the parts of concrete, the cross ply of wood.
All that is left is the dirt square
where the liberated seedlings will sprout into lush
over the rotted foundations now buried
in the history of the soil, rested in its memory.