Warm Seas

Childhood was crowned with cowslip mornings.
Teaseled clouds taunted the sun, rousing it to riot,
and our skins felt the force.

Sucking the sweetness from pink clover,
Raiding fairy rings for early-morning mushrooms -
dew soaked our shoes and our breath told tales on the air.
Peppery buttercups reflected our sins, on golden chins,
as we reaped the fat of the land.

Snaking past the adder we scattered into hawthorn -
the secret dens we knew so well,
our scuffed shoes straining for splitsies in dry dust.

We tracked the course of the cracked mud to its source -
a sluice dammed with debris from our shipwrecks.
We freed the floods and washed away the sins of the summer.
We were the Famous Five, sailing like Swallows and Amazons
into our own storybook.

Standing tall on a tank-trap - I'm king of the concrete castle,
feeling the breeze from the Warm Seas.

Carole Houston

If you've any comments on this poem, Carole Houston would be pleased to hear from you.