Pier Pressure

Shortlisted entry

by S J Harris

Every fine summer breaktime, we'd all sit
On stones around the back of the old school,
And, sun warm on our printed cotton backs,
In languid innocence, dip curious fingers
Into the pond's cold water.

Below and above its skin's transparent surface
Across which tiny water-boatmen whizzed,
A myriad host of treasures on display:
Waving green weed, spawn's jellied ball-clumps

Each sac housing one slow-lengthening black dot.
Water-snails; small molluscs from the deep,
Newts that crawled up arms with sticky footlets,
Kingcups glowing with all of summer's glory,
While overhead, a dozen damsel-flies
Danced their endless, brilliant-bodied gavottes.

Best of all: the placid, warty toad,
Whose still, cold wetness pulsed on outstretched palms.
When a frog leapt out, everyone screamed.
Louise said that she'd marry one someday.
(Her husband's a solicitor from Hampstead.)

But on dull days, no one went near the pond
Who wants to be near wetness in the gloom?
Except occasionally in passing: you'd look down,
See quite clearly, if only in your head,
Womanhood forming behind a face and name.

List of shortlisted entries