The Nuns’ Wall

At night, when I bolted up the punishing
steepness of Richmond Hill, there was
the wall, and a line of heads along the top –
nuns in the moonlight. If they weren’t
ghosts, how did they get up there?
Did they drag ladders from the convent
at midnight, creaky bodies in full habit
clambering up the wobbly rungs?
I had paid my dues for robbing the grapes!
Fecky Murphy led us over the wall between
the handball alley and their greenhouse.
Big, blue grapes, huge bunches of them that
I sold for a penny a throw on the street.
They had us up in court for the damage
and the shortfall in communion wine
...