Useful String

I received a leaflet this morning about a poetry prize. After a few minutes of imagining entering and casually turning my fiver into two and half grand, I pulled myself together and decided to just put a poem on here instead.

Very rarely I have an idea that wants to be poetry but, even after writing it, this one still wants to be a poem. Its about two memorable days from my childhood, about string and also about time …

Useful String

We walk the dazzling fields.

A searing white sphere, squinting eyes.

Shorts and halter-neck

expose legs and back.

Wheat stubble scratches ankles.

Dad and brother march,

macho pride in first and fast.

Grandma regales Mum with village tales.

You and I lag behind

and we discover the trees,

the bees, the beetles,

flowers and crickets.

The spared ears of wheat,

at the field’s edges.

A loveliness of ladybirds.

You slowly bend with rickety legs,

pulling and gathering your useful string

from crust-dry furrows, releasing

fine powder into the air.

You wind it around your hand.

Pocket neat bundles, to store

in the drawer in the shed.

Your collections turned to rust,

dust and yellow-age. After -

we cleared out, threw away,

before the last day,

when we sat by the pond and

drank lemon squash from jam jars.