Buckets

I would love to return to the seaside
on a sixties time machine ride,
where my sister and I used to play
with our plastic buckets and spades.

I would feel the sand between my toes,
watch the waves crash on the stones,
and run down to the sea to fill my bucket
with water to pour in our sandcastle’s moat.

I’d eat salt and vinegary chips from the pier,
where the noisy arcade would make us stare
with its glittery machines and penny falls,
loud pop music and bingo calls.

But best of all would be the coach ride home
with our mum and our nan, safe and warm.

Kim M. Russell, 7th November 2023

It’s Tuesday again and Poetics at the dVerse Poets Pub. This week Lisa is our host with a time machine bucket list prompt. She tells us about her own time machine bucket list of iconic concerts of the past she would have loved to have seen live.

Our challenge is to choose one of the three options Lisa has given us: the first is to create our own time machine bucket lists of ten or more things, and then choose one about which to write our poems; the second is to choose our favourite time travellers and write poems about them; and the third is to write about metaphorical journeys we have taken or would like to take.

I’ve gone nostalgic with this one.

49 thoughts on “Buckets”

    1. Thank you, Björn. We never had family holidays when we were children, just days out at the seaside in the summer holidays, and they were the happiest times, even when it rained. My nan saved up all year for those trips.

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  2. This poem has my heart, Kim! It’s so evocative. I especially love; “I’d eat salt and vinegary chips from the pier, where the noisy arcade would make us stare with its glittery machines and penny falls.” ❤️❤️❤️

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  6. Kim, oh how I love your tapping in to those cherished memories and sharing them ❤ You two look pleased as punch with the day and everything with it. That warm ride home with your mum and nan, safe and warm, is the perfect ending to a perfect day.

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