Somethings from childhood till old age remain <br />And old Joe returns to his youth again <br />By stream between the hedgerow and the old dirt track <br />He often stood and watched the stickleback. <br /> <br />The stickleback a fish of minnow size <br />Reddish under the gills and bulging eyes <br />In Spring and Summer in dykes and streams they breed <br />When male for the female makes a nest of weeds. <br /> <br />And in the nest their eggs the females laid <br />The only part in parenting they played <br />They left the male to the parenting role <br />To guard their young and his boundaries to patrol. <br /> <br />I will be seventy on my next birthday <br />Says old Joe with the hair of silver gray <br />And though somethings from our childhood with us stay <br />As years go by the memories fade away. <br /> <br />And in my boyhood years in distant Liverpool <br />On Spring evenings on my way home from school <br />By stream between the hedgerow and dirt track <br />I often stood and watched the stickleback.<br /><br />Francis Duggan<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-stickleback/
