‘Once Upon a May Day Morning, a Father
Takes His Three Daughters on a Greenline Bus
Deep Into the Green Rolling Countryside of Kent.’
He packs a picnic, hard boiled eggs
with the shell still on to protect them,
tomatoes, crisps, ham sandwiches.
Neat in his leather rucksack from the war.
There’s a tunnel through brambles.
Bees singing in white flowers.
A meadow of dandelion clocks.
Seeds drifting aimlessly.
The father shows the daughters how to eat
the tomatoes so no juice spurts out. How
to peel the eggs, so no bits of gritty shell
jam in their teeth. He tells them,
leave the broken shells on the grass
so the rabbits’ll eat them and they’ll be broken down
and put calcium in the soil. It keeps the grass healthy.
We sat in rabbit droppings. He broke one open,
so we could see it was just dried grass.
We climbed a hill and London shimmered.
The Hog’s Back, a distant narrow ridge. Before
the war, he said, when he was young, he’d ride along it
on a motor bike. The daughters are silent. The father
in goggles and a leather helmet, speeding along.
Sally St Clair’s stories and poems have appeared in numerous magazines and journals, most recently in Stone of Madness Press, Poetry Scotland, Raceme and ARC. She is currently working on a pamphlet, as well as a novel. sallystclair.com.