Michaela Morgan

The Long Holidays

The day stretches ahead – nothing but

grass and sky grass and sky grass and sky grass and sky

as far as the eye can see

nothing but

sky and grass sky and grass sky and grass sky and grass

and the wind galloping hard over the fields

like a riderless horse.

Esther Morgan

In Wellies

Oh to be in Magherabeg

Where I was adult free

From sun up til head down,

Stomping through streams in worn out wellies,

Chasing rams down to the Swilly.

They called me in only to eat

Rock buns for tea

And say the rosary –

Oh clement , oh loving, oh sweet Virgin Mary.

I never knew then what stranger danger was –

Warned only to ‘mind that road’

Which had killed two of my grandmother’s dogs.

At the close of summer

I hid beneath beds

So I wouldn’t have to leave

Knowing it wasn’t the hills I would miss

But being a girl unbridled.

Sarah Crossan

Lines Composed in a Wood on a Windy Day

My soul is awakened, my spirit is soaring

And carried aloft on the wings of the breeze;

For above and around me the wild wind is roaring,

Arousing to rapture the earth and the seas.

The long withered grass in the sunshine is glancing,

The bare trees are tossing their branches on high;

The dead leaves beneath them are merrily dancing,

The white clouds are scudding across the blue sky.

I wish I could see how the ocean is lashing

The foam of its billows to whirlwinds of spray;

I wish I could see how its proud waves are dashing,

And hear the wild roar of their thunder today!

Anne Brontë

Londoner

Scarcely two hours back in the country

and I’m shopping in East Finchley High Road

in a cotton skirt, a cardigan, jandals –

or flipflops as people call them here,

where February’s winter. Aren’t I cold?

The neighbours in their overcoats are smiling

at my smiles and not at my bare toes:

they know me here.

I hardly know myself,

yet. It takes me until Monday evening,

walking from the office after dark

to Westminster Bridge. It’s cold, it’s foggy,

the traffic’s as abominable as ever,

and there across the Thames is County Hall,

that uninspired stone body, floodlit.

It makes me laugh. In fact, it makes me sing.

Fleur Adcock

She Showed Me Her Dreams

On a winter day when frost crackled

static in the wireless, the window lost

light and dark slid through the glass

into my eyes, she poked the fire to

make the flames dance on the coals.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘tell me what you see.’

I watched serpents glide from caverns,

their mouths wide. I saw forests fall

to ashes and children burning.

The devil glowered from the embers.

My face and knees prickled heat and

gravestone shivers chilled my spine.

She stood behind me against the cold.

‘Look again,’ she said.

‘Can you see where the yellow is