This is my village
by Katie Daniels
[ poetry - february 09 ]
This is my village:
all roads out spidering uphill -
Church Street, Swan Street, Cox Hill.
Estates closing like new skin around the edges.
These are the streets of my village:
pastel, half-timbered,
leaning sideways and in.
This is Broad Street
where Tornado Smith
rode the wall of death
with a lion in his sidecar.
This is the river through my village:
some winters, when I was small,
the water covered Broad Street,
made my village a ford again.
This is the centre of my village:
where the road curves past the post office
and the bridge leads to the church.
This is the bridge
where there are two girls,
where two girls are whispering,
where I am whispering to Michelle.
It is a secret.
