Were there ever any rivers?

Were there ever any rivers?

When the world was a

Bunch of children

Playing wargames in cornfields

Making do with nothing

Armies were a coming

Charging through the tunnel

Beneath the railway line

On the other side

Was a foreign land

Errol Flynn was a soldier

But he was never an American

For all, he played the part

Philanderer was a word

Until a very British scandal

Played out across the screen

In black and white

Why do they always take

A man’s indiscretion

And blame it on the woman

Nothing ever changes

We were ye-olde merry men

Playing with swordsticks

Rolly-polly heaven

Before dog walking was a thing

Nobody knew

What a poo-bag was

English pets were trained to

Do their business in the garden

It made good fertilizer

The sky was as wide as Kansas

Whatever that was

Aeroplanes were the enemy

Even on a golden beach

So brightly yellow

Where an old landing craft

Took naive children into the shallows

Normandy was just a little way

Beyond the coal scuttle

Beating through the North Sea

Where it met the sky

The sea rolled in to meet

The river bed

Which ran dry until the autumn

When the rain became a backdrop

For a foray behind the lines

The old wood became a Malayan jungle

There were never any mosquitoes

Trench foot or gangrenous toes

But there was a broken arm or two

Between friends

And a few black eyes

From over-exuberant players

Making a muddy field

Into a dangerous swampland

But there were never any rivers

To fall into

Or to cross

Just a mill pond

And a Stickleback stream

That wound its way eventually

To the sea.

Where the sand was bright and golden

All the way to Never Be