So This Is Dilham

There are gulls between the goals
on the village football pitch,
tugging at lingering wisps of mist,
their white wings stark against dirty green.

They ignore the jackdaws, yin
to their yang, pick at the last daisies,
the ones that haven’t been squashed
in mud, hoping for a tasty snack.

No fish and chips here, too far
from the coast, no shops either;
just an old pub, missing summer visitors.
November is a lonely month.

After harvest, the rumble of tractors
is conspicuous in its absence,
no racing round the village bends,
and it’s Sunday morning, so no school bus,

just the occasional dog walker,
a cyclist or two, and gulls circling
the vast sky above the village pitch,
off to find breakfast along the coast.

Kim M. Russell, 18th November 2025

Jennifer Wagner is our guest host for this week’s Poetics at the dVerse Poets Pub, with a prompt inspired by Ted Kooser, the thirteenth U.S. Poet Laureate, and 2005 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry winner in 2005.

Jennifer tells us that his work is known “for being accessible and engaging.  Using plain speech, he writes about everyday experiences while subtly illuminating deeper themes.  He has a keen eye for noticing the overlooked and a knack for nuanced metaphor.  His work is often rooted in his particular local landscape: rural life in the Great Plains.” As an example of this, she has shared ‘So This Is Nebraska’, in which Kooser has used stunning and surprising personification.

Our challenge is to use Ted Kooser’s ‘So This Is Nebraska’ poem for inspiration to write our own ‘So This Is…’ poem., in which Jennifer asks us to immerse our readers in our, country, state, city, neighbourhood, beach, forest, coffee shop, restaurant, etc.—any place, and in any season, we choose. 

29 thoughts on “So This Is Dilham”

  5. A lovely glimpse of your peaceful Sunday morning. I always enjoy your poems about the place where you live, and love how you walk its lovely spaces and bring them to us in poems.

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    1. Thank you, Melissa. I have a problem with my eye, so I couldn’t read and comment last night. I’m about to now, and ma looking forward to some interesting poems.

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  13. Your poem and picture is making me shiver as I recall weekend school football matches on pitches like this.

    Very English, very quaint. I can’t imagine living somewhere with no shops anymore. I live in a tiny village in Thailand and every house is selling something, usually food.

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