Today’s choice
Previous poems
Jean Atkin
Finders
We scoured the parish tip most weeks, when we were kids.
We clambered it in wellies. Ferals, we scavenged
in the debris of the adults’ lives.
Like a mad deck shuffled, our tip turned up
a fat brown teapot without a lid/ a yellow rubber duck/
a huge string vest/ a Playboy stash/
a galvanized bucket, base burned out by ash.
We shrieked and burrowed through the sodden sacks,
won a red ballcock, no chain. And why so many
rusty bicycles with missing spokes?
We delved a split tea crate
for crimson curtains, slung them
round our shoulders to make mildewed cloaks.
Then I carried home a violet on a broken plate.
Jean Atkin’s third full collection High Nowhere is was published last year by IDP. Previous publications include How Time is in Fields (IDP); The Bicycles of Ice and Salt (IDP) and Fan-peckled (Fair Acre Press). She is a poet in education and community. www.jeanatkin.com
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