Five Poems

Being Big

I remember this:
we used to wear little white caps and coats
and the Wooster girls would sit on the walls
while I spent most of my time in the cowshed listening.

Will opened the window and out they flew
and the smells began to come off the fields of mangel.

Things looked more real in the school.
There were round tables, I think two,
an ordinary stove, a sort of egg,

the old lady and the mysterious effect
she had on me making paper nuns,

rooks flying home
getting under the table
and under the bed,

where the cracks in the floor
...