What the World Could be Like

The smell of lime was coming in to the open air,
Blue sky flying over us,
Red roses going backwards and forwards,
Dogs crying louder and louder,
Suddenly a car crash in to a brick wall,
Then there was a bang it was a bomb.
There was a lovely smell of opium.
The fresh smell was a peach rose,
Sparkling water running down the stream.
The people are trying to walk but they can't.
At the end of the world bones lying ever way
And the bubbly waters going all over.

Linzi age 9yrs

Chapter: Learning more about Lives pg 49
Read my Mind - young children, poetry and learning
Fred Sedgwick

How to Leave the World that Worships should

Let faxes butter-curl on dusty shelves.
Let junkmail build its castles in the hush
of other people’s halls. Let deadlines burst
and flash like glorious fireworks somewhere else.
As hours go softly by, let others curse
the roads where distant drivers queue like sheep.
Let e-mails fly like panicked, tiny birds.
Let phones, unanswered, ring themselves to sleep.

Above, the sky unrolls its telegram,
immense and wordless, simply understood:
you’ve made your mark like birdtracks in the sand -
now make the air in your lungs your livelihood.
See how each wave arrives at last to heave
itself upon the beach and vanish. Breathe.

Ros Barber

from the Herne Bay sonnets.
Published in Material (Anvil 2008).
Also available on the Oxfam Lifelines 2 CD.

PS Feb 6th

1. Calle Shevens Vals - Eve Taube (Michael)
2. How to Leave the World that Worships should - Ros Barber (Juliette)
3. Chocolate from the Famine Museum - Sheenah Pugh (Michael)
4. What the World Could be Like - Linzi age 9yrs (Juliette)