BACK TO POETRY AGAIN

Having written poetry since the age of 7 or 8, I am getting back to it again after a 20 year break during which time I have been engaged professionally in watercolour painting and latterly in writing a book. I am posting firstly a poem I wrote in 1978 entitled "Open Spaces" about my then 6 year old youngest daughter, which received First Prize that year in the Bexley Arts Council Adult Literary Competition. The prize was £100 - not much by today's standard but wasn't too bad then. The remaining poems I wrote in the early eighties. So hopefully I will be writing some new ones soon.


OPEN SPACES

Walking over the wide-open spaces
my six year old daughter said
"I like holding your hand daddy,
it's all warm and squeezy"
and then
"I can always recognise people I know
by the anoraks they are wearing."

The far breeze was in our faces
tugging at our sleeves
sweeping and ruffling the grass,
and I wondered why in one breath
she had linked my hand and other peoples' anoraks.

Out there in the crying wind
which strained to join infinity unfurled,
the hard openness pressed through my heart -
the reality of those wide-open spaces
had not only dawned on me
but had squeezed my daughter's heart too,
the security of the anoraks and my hand
she had needed so much.

One small and young body had found freedom
to exist, to run, to fly.
Flight of a bird fresh from its nest,
but ready to return and nestle the twigs of home.

Far flung against the cotton galleons
I saw her, anorak silhouetted billowing in the breeze -
but soon, like a homing pidgeon she returned,
as though the world was too large
and should encircle her warm and squeezy like my hand.