Searching for Bluebells

by Linda Burnett

We went there all alone.
In Hindley's shade, they barely gave a second thought,
though we were only eight. We detoured via the pigs
and see-sawed on the wall to glimpse
reclining sows suckling fat, pink thumbs.
We shrivelled at the pong and pinched our nose.

A snarl of motorbikes
rutting round dirt tracks disturbed. Still we scampered on,
keen to watch water seething over rocks
through gothic breaches in the stone bridge.
We cupped our ears to block the lorry noise
and jabber with the babbling beneath.

The treasure trove we sought
drew us down Coxley bank. The brook beckoned us:
swish willows dripped their early trails;
grasses laced with cuckoo spit;
lush primrose, forced with winter rain,
lit up the runway to our secret bower.

We let the sunshine breath
loose limbs and cardigans, lulled velvet by the haze.
It always made me catch - still does today -
to taste the shimmer and the awe.
Bluebells! We couldn't stop ourselves
melting helpless into the violet spray.

All Sunday to roam free...
Then, squashed bunches clutched for Nature Time at school
as living proof that we were there,
our traipse back home seemed twice as long.
Back before dark, they didn't even think
to ask what we had done all day.

Judge's Comments - Roger Elkin

Searching for Bluebells has an open innocence that befits the activities of these eight year olds left "All Sunday to roam free" in their quest to pick bluebells - the "squashed bunches clutched for Nature Time at school". How exact that "squashed" and "clutched", a precision of touch that chimes in with the other sense descriptions - the "pong" of the "sows suckling fat, pink thumbs" (superb metaphor), the "snarl of motorbikes", the "jabber with the babbling beneath" (splendid alliteration and assonance), until the "traipse back home". The exactness of such diction is, however, undermined by an occasional tweeness in the writing - "scampered", "the brook beckoned us" - and a somewhat bathetic last two lines.