Flying over Drumlins in my Sleep

A landscape stretched on canvas, still all lumps

and bumps - basket of eggs, they call it - as I dip and dive,

swoop down to Stream Street, right to Folly Lane,

pecked bottle tops on crates of milk

left outside in the rain.

Then up the well-worn wooden treads of stairs

to ceiling high sash windows, iron heating pipes that groan

and clunk and clank. A sawdust smell and polish;

steam rising from the sweet stewed tea they drank

in Peggy’s lunchroom.

And look at Wordsworth’s skaters collaged upon the wall

from remnant scraps and buttons. Girls in mossy jumpers race

on silver tin foil blades toward distant outlined mountains.

On another wall, a silhouette, of a man by a moonlit door,

black felt hat and cloak, horse cropping a green crepe floor.

Next, Dr Kelly’s Garden, past the convent gate,

to roll in bluebells and wild garlic, rain drenched grass and soil.

Girls grub with trowels in the damp earth. They are playing

Fantasy Flowers again, Lily of the Valley and Love-in-a-Mist,

with packet seeds of spring that conjure scenes of enthralled lives.

Then Alice scales the chestnut tree

and perches overhead.

Flourishing a spike of white-pink buds,

she offers to forgive them all,

if they will crown her Queen.