With Grandad gone
I had the back of the car
to myself, listed the seven counties
Dad drove us through every year,
three of us boxed on the leather seats.
How did we get there, all in one day?
Under the gear stick, tarmac in view,
open to puddles taken too fast — me
and my party-dressed dolls, counting the miles
to clotted cream and a stream that drops
from the moor to a trough by the barn,
Dad picking mushrooms in sheep fields,
black-bellied, tea-plate wide.
I knew the earth rolling by
was red, smelt its tang on the wind,
felt woods weighing green
on high-banked lanes to the sea.
Jenny Hockey is a Sheffield poet and former academic. In 2013 New Writing North awarded her a New Poets Bursary. After magazine and anthology publications since 1985, Oversteps Books published her collection, Going to bed with the moon in 2019. jennyhockeypoetry.co.uk