Bitter-Sweet Summers
(from a Cornish childhood)
All summer long,
the long trek to Tregirls -
past Prideaux Place,
under the broad bridge
where the sounds bounced around,
through the lost lanes,
over the sky fields,
down, down to the beach
unpeopled by the visitors.
There, in a private bay,
the day trickled away
between castles and moats,
miniature crabs in warm rock pools,
expeditions to the water’s edge,
sandwiches of sand that ground between the teeth,
sharp, sweet, lemonade that puckered up the mouth.
Then, the haul back up the cliff,
lugging the day’s gold in a pail,
to carry home, to keep for ever.
But always, halfway there,
the unceremonious upending
of the treasured, spoils -
a lone, lonely heap of sand and. shells
abandoned, unexplained,
in the middle of the wake
of the sad seaweed’s trail.
Page(s) 12
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The