#amwriting #poetry #poem Soon, The Wild Cotton Grows

 Soon, The Wild Cotton Grows

Swatting at a dull yellow dragonfly -
that has for reasons of wind and season
hoovered too closely into view - I fall 
into that tedious joy when you catch sight of your children.
They have broken from their clambering across the rocks,
and while one dances a hornpipe,
the other stands, eyes cupped,
looking out across the valley, to the butter-pats of farms,
or the various nick-nacks of copses and culverts that blur
into the kind of pastoral that draws the eye.
Or perhaps enlivens the female passenger of a passing car,
to observe that from the hilltop you can see seven counties.
Of course you can't. If you squint, and let your eye settle,
through the heat haze you can see perhaps Lancashire: at best
But the day is too hot, and pleasant, to quibble.
A single cuckoo soldiers on, hiccuping it's half song
over the whirling of the drying brook.
And now my children are stretched out and bathing.
So out of habit, I swat the air again.