Anna Wigley
Learning to Swim
Second Light Poetry Competition 2008 SECOND PRIZE
The smell of ferns that summer:
a green musk, with the tang of streams
cobbled with birds’-egg pebbles,
and the jungle heat of a July noon.
The ferns were cool to the touch
and sprang back from our tugging hands
as we waded thigh-deep
through their soft green breakers.
The hill was wooded with their stems
and rustled softly in the wind.
Not an inch was uncovered,
not a patch of ground
remained unroofed by tiles
of tapering fronds. Drops of sun
dripped through the tiny cracks
in the long green feathers
but the rest was caught and cabled
in the vast factory of ferns.
You threw me into a plashy pool
of leaves, and I screamed,
feeling the sky tilt sharply
and the hill jerk up
to break my bones;
then suddenly found I could swim.
Since being selected as Second Prize winner, this poem has been published in Anna Wigley’s new collection, “Waking in Winter”. Poem included here by kind permission of Gomer Press
Competition judged by Gillian Clarke
Page(s) 15
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