Friday, August 17, 2018

Ginger Brigade



.
The day would be made when, like three musketeers,
the trio comprising the Ginger Brigade would amass
the good will of their kinsmen and peers: hear the cheers
.
their parade to their run down on Plum Street in Blundon
evinced from the crowd – where they’d trundle and glide
every Whitsuntide, Monday and Sunday and Mrs. Dunn’s
.
Bun Day, begun by the mum of each one of the three in
the run, her sons Dunstan and Runnel and Gunnar. Ginger-
haired well-behaved boys, they never made very much noise:
.
no clatter or din would arise from their quietly pattering feet
on the pavement; the crowd would grow still, and that quiet
would one day be why they would all be undone in a spill
.
and a splat. One Monday a semi careened round and hit them
head on and kaboshed them to mud. Their flattened remains
and the swamp of their blood were bright ginger. Red hair
.
has been banned ever since in the land of glum Blundun.
Mrs. Dunn stopped at once baking buns. Like everything else
God has done, slow or fast, the Ginger Brigade didn’t last.
.
.

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