It’s not just a cup of tea,it’s fragrant steamfrom a porcelain bowl,leaves inside blossoming outside. It’s not just a breath of air,it’s hundreds of yearsof leaves and latewood,Earth’s redemption. It’s not just the sea,it’s immeasurable depthsand creatures as mysteriousas aliens somewhere in space. It’s not just poetry,it’s time scrunched into a balland smoothed out again,words […]
Category: Poems about Childhood and Youth
The City I Grew Up In
We grew up in flatswith too many stairs to the top,and yet I ran up them, braveand unafraid, morescared of the piss-scented liftthat always stoppedbetween floors. Accompanied by the roarof traffic speeding alongLondon Road, I’d pick my waybetween parked cars,where dads smoked,and mums called kids in to teafrom balconies on the upper floors. Plimsolled feet […]
Buckets
I would love to return to the seasideon a sixties time machine ride,where my sister and I used to playwith 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 bucketwith water to pour in our sandcastle’s moat. […]
Day at the Seaside
It was one day at the seaside, midway through the summer holidays and, despite the trauma of tepid vomit lying heavy in a paper bag, about to drip on my new cotton dress, as soon as we reached the top of the hill, the whole coach sang with the thrill of seeing the sea. After […]
The Flats by the Playing Field
1. Too many stairs to the top floor, and yet I ran up them, brave and unafraid of falling, but more scared of the piss-scented lift that always stopped between floors. 2. If you bumped into a neighbour, leaping downstairs was easier, even on the way to the grocery store. it was an escape, the […]
The Landing at the Top of the Stairs
My five year old self sits on the toilet, door open so I can see the top flight of stairs inhabited by shadows from a skylight. There’s a closed door at the end of the twilight; escaping from the keyless lock is sunlight full of dust motes that float. I am torn between a monster […]
Just Like Her
I was five and struggled to understand the relationship; she was cousin to my mother but only a year older than me. Why couldn’t I stay tidy, just like her? Why couldn’t I keep clean, just like her? She had hair ribbons, shiny shoes and a music box with a little ballerina. I wanted one […]
Childhood in Monochrome
Loving grandparents were always there to house me, feed me, teach me, grandmother in charge of my care while my parents struggled daily. Now only a handful of monochrome photographs remain as tattered ghosts of the past, but my love of home, stories, poems and music still cast their light on the present. They are […]
Bunty
She wasn’t my dog, the boxer with a coat the colour of fox fur, leaping and shivering with pleasure. She wasn’t even my aunt’s. Away from home, I was only four, with my aunt and her current suitor on a jaunt to the Essex coast for four days. I was just a pawn, a red […]
Post War Realism
The opening credits roll across a kitchen sink, in black and white, a fifties masterpiece. A nineteen-year-old mother-to-be is pale and oh so young, drying dishes beside her own mother. Her bump isn’t big. But it’s there. The girl inside is anxious to burst into the world. The scene switches to an incubator, a tiny […]
writing in north norfolk 