Spring is a young girl who having helped© Gerald England
her mother with chores goes, still
with her pinny on, barefoot to where
the sheep graze on a hillside by a pond
There, throwing her straw bonnet aside,
she throws her body down beside her young sister
and picking a buttercup, examines it,
marvelling at the detail of nature,
seeing the sun's colour in its petals
Her sister stares into the water
and wonders what it is her elder knows
Composed: Edinburgh, 1st July 1979
1980 THE RAINBOW AND OTHER POEMS (Heckmondwyke, Fighting Cock Press)
1981 Britannic Magazine (UK)
1990 Maple Valley Vine (USA)
1992 Poesie India (India)
2002 EOTU (Internet)
2004 Iodine (USA)
When Tessa cries with the approach of autumn, I recite to her Gerard Manly Hopkins' "Spring and Fall: To a Young Child". This year, she recited it with me.
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