Joy Ardy
Uncle Ted's Chicken Shed
was a seaside-blue hut of a place
beached on the bank at the end
of the stumpy garden, where bantams
crewed in the fertiliser dark, lifting
each foot like a mechanical grab
in the holiday town arcades. Above them
rabbits blinked their noses and sneezed
in the straw. Out of their hutches
Gran pulled winter mittens and pies
with hands mapped like the Nile.
When I’d dared the chickens
with potato-peel mash, stroked
each rabbit a fair number of times,
sailed the world round the shed
in the home-made wheelbarrow,
I could climb out of my fat loneliness,
be an Enid Blyton girl in the apple trees,
bravely higher each time, till the day
I let go with my hands, swung by my legs,
white knickers flagging the blue sky.
When the branches snagged my sleeves
I was trapped, couldn’t put the ground
back where I thought it belonged,
so I kicked off and rushed into
the scratchy air, watching grass
and clouds tumble, the chicken shed
grow wings and fly with speckled feathers
to carry me clucking above the trees.
Page(s) 15
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