Daffodil Promise

Sunshine spills,
In a dreamy, creamy,
Bright gold mist,
Over farmers’ fields,
Emerald grass and ruby rocks,
School shoes pound into russet earth,
Giggles tear,
Through a perfect powder-blue
Pale sapphire sky,
Fresh faces flushed and polished in the wind,
Pink mouths pretty in smiles of
Excitement, exuberance and freedom . . .
Three schoolgirls,
Bags thrown down, forgotten, in trampled grass,
Shriek challenges and race,
Over a leaping, ever changing kingdom,
Of stone palaces, and rushing seas,
Tumbling in ruins and bubbling in brooks,
Subject to their burning, persistent imagination,
The writer brushes,
Brunette curls,
From a damp, fiery rose cheek,
Sprinting uphill . . .
And they hit the fence together,
Screaming laughter to motorway that pulses with activity,
Below them,
The whole world below them as they stand,
Victorious,
Sisters clutching,
The blooms they picked,
Daffodils,
They rest them gently against the pale wood,
And swear on the soft,
Glowing, golden beauty,
Of their sunshine flowers,
That forever a farmer’s field,
Will be their playground . . .

Shauna Corrigan (14)