by Linda Talbot
They walk down the staircase and into the street
and out to the country down roads they can choose.
And chuckle to think how when Timothy wakes
he will call “Mother, where are my luminous shoes?”
And call out he does, but the shoes are not there,
so he pulls on his socks and goes searching the streets.
The shoes are still walking but soon they get lost
and long to be filled up by Timothy’s feet.
Exhausted they lie with their laces all loose,
till a lorry appears with a tottering load.
“What very bright cats’ eyes,” the driver exclaims
and almost runs over them in the road.
Then they see Timothy walk round the bend
so they hide in a ditch while he goes on ahead.
They follow him home and when he falls asleep,
they silently tiptoe back under the bed.
BACK TO THE START!
An Apple for the Teacher
Miss Henshaw is a teacher. Do I hear you groan?
She has a class of fifty five she tries to teach alone.
Some of the children call her names and others stay away
but not Fanny Swotalot
She’s early every day.
She likes to hear Miss Henshaw tell how two and three make four
and how the world is bottomless because it has no floor.
The children say Miss Henshaw is all muddled and misled
but write it down while Fanny
stores it all up in her head.
Every day at ten to nine when she takes her seat
Fanny brings an apple from the orchard up the street.
Miss Henshaw murmurs “thank you” and tries to tell the class
how apples grow on stalks
found sprouting in the grass.
Miss Henshaw’s fond of apples and may eat four a day
which is why the children often wonder what she tries to say.
The munching makes her words like wool, but Fanny listens still
and starts to bring her apples
from the orchard on the hill.
Then Fanny sees one morning that Miss Henshaw’s cheeks are red
and where her wispy hair once sprang a leaf has grown instead.
Her legs become a slender stalk, her hands have shrunk as well
and as the children watch wide-eyed
her head begins to swell.
“She’s turned into an apple!” they cry, “It’s Fanny’s fault”
and wonder if Miss Henshaw’s change of character will halt.
But still she goes on growing till her head is twice its size
and alarm like large black apple pips
is darting in her eyes.
“Shall we eat her?” ask the children. Fanny says, “Oh dear!”
“Now that she’s a apple, let’s roll her out of here!”
says one fat girl and then a boy looks up and shouts out, “Hey!
“Let’s take her to the High Street. Today is market day.”
And Fanny cannot stop them as they open wide the door
and heaving all together roll Miss Henshaw round the floor.
I wonder who will buy her? thinks Fanny with a sigh.
Will she end up in a bowl
or sliced for apple pie?
So if you eat an apple that has an extra crunch
you may not have had an apple
but Miss Henshaw for your lunch.
BACK TO THE START!
Downstream
If you’ve ever been to see how
a river began:
how it chattered as it tumbled
and chuckled as it ran,
and dawdled in the rushes
where the pebbles played a tune
and slid like a shadow
beneath a silver moon;
You will know how it feels
to have quicksilver in your heels;
to hear the seagulls crying on the quay.
Until the river shivers in the cold, salty air
as it slows at last and turns into the sea.
BACK TO THE START!
Grey-Faced Men
Grey-faced men who do not question
cannot venture far,
but scurry to a safe spot
and stay just where they are.
There are matters always pressing
and duties to be done,
to prevent the least uncertainty
or smallest taste of fun.
But grey-faced men are running too
from what they fear to know;
afraid of crowded thoroughfares
where other people go.
BACK TO THE START!
Two Heads
Benjamin Biggins has two heads;
one is yellow, the other is red.
When one head laughs, the other one cries,
when one tells the truth, the other one lies.
So one grey day they come to blows
and both the heads have a broken nose.
Then all four eyes begin to cry
and the colours run and the tears won’t dry.
“Let’s be friends!” the yellow head says,
“If you’ll agree to be yellow and let me be red.”
But both the heads have got so wet,
they have turned to orange.
BACK TO THE START!
The Wind
How lonely and forlorn he cries; how sadly sighs.
When twilight falls on winter day, he moans away.
He has no home, is all alone, must always roam
the stormy wastes. He may grow faint and die away,
always to revive again and sigh behind the rain.
Across deserted moors and wild seashores
he wends his way. Towards the end of day
he wails the most; a lonely ghost
of something that has always been.
He cries aloud amongst the crowd,
but no one hears him there.
All is bustle, noise and rush;
no one there to care.
He is gentler in the months
when summer sun shines through.
He whispers softly through the leaves
‘neath shimmering skies of blue.
And sometimes he may rest
and hold his breath on clammy day.
But the real wind, the winter wind,
has many things to say.
BACK TO THE START!
A camel’s a curious creature.
His lumpety hump is a
pantry, you know,
which stores up supplies for the
journeys he’ll go,
as he plods with great feet through the sand.
He is driven by dark-skinned drovers
In long trailing caravans,
dusty and slow,
across deep-drifting sand
where the desert winds blow;
where the unbroken sand is white hot.
But sometimes he’ll race without burden;
his feet light as air
so the sand hangs in clouds
as he flies through the sun
unheeding and free
and is clapped by the colourful crowds.
Then he goes back to work
and walks slowly through streets
which are rarely in shade,
dressed in long, coloured blankets,
striped and hand-made;
Ship of the Desert and King of the Sands.
BACK TO THE START!
Small Secrets
At night time when the air is warm
and everything’s asleep, you think.
The woods and meadows quietly stir
and tiny eyes begin to blink.
The drowsy wood is murmuring low
and dripping in the dark with dew.
Above the trees a shadow swoops;
a lonely bat is
sweeping through.
A scuttling in the long, coarse grass
reveals a secret of the night.
For there are teams of tiny things
although they play way out of sight.
Soon dawn breaks by the chattering stream
and where the rustling fields have dozed -
her cobwebs strung across the trees.
The eyes of night have softly closed.
BACK TO THE START!
The great black Tom cat strides the night,
his coat like snow in the pale moonlight.
He remembers days gone by
when cats were brave and far more sly;
when they had to look out for themselves.
No tins of fish lined up on shelves.
Then the cats begin to bawl,
yowl, howl and catterwaul.
And the great black Tom sits like a king -
too dignified to sing.
BACK TO THE START!
"Are there fairies in the sea?"
Asks a little boy called Smee.
“No!” his Uncle Jellicoe replies,
“But there are mermaids on the rocks
darning lazy sailors’ socks.”
“Why don’t they darn their own?”
“Too busy looking at the sea,”
murmurs Uncle Jellicoe.
“You see, it all looks the same
so sometimes they forget their name.”
“How do they know where to steer?”
“The mermaids lead then in circles of foam
“until they’re back where they started - at home!”
“But why go at all?”
“They have jelly and tea and tobacco to trade
and enormous fruit cakes that have all been home made.
“But they all get forgotten as they look at the rocks
and the mermaids at play or darning their socks.”
“They’re lucky they don’t end up on those rocks.”
Some do and shout “Oh!" and are seen no more.
Others are lucky and wash up on the shore
and when they get home far away from the sea
there’s plenty of jelly and fruit cake for tea.”
Oh yes, but you know what they left on the rocks?”
their socks!”
"Now I’ll tell you of Hickory Fish
who ended up a delicious shark’s dish!
“How lucky I am,” says Hickory Fish,
“I can change colour whenever I wish!
“One day I’ll be blue, another day, red and if I’m in hiding, the colour of lead.”
One day he is yellow and woos a small plaice.
“Let’s have a wedding!” (He has a red face).
They tumble and turn
and laugh through the day
and Hickory looks like a paint box display;
vermilion, burnt orange, ochre and green,
lighting the ocean, so seen from above
he looks like the dancing jewels of the deep.
Until a sleek shark steals through the thick murk
and looking at Hickory, gives a wide smirk.
As the smaller fish dart and swarm and cheer
they see the shark coming and cry, “Swim clear!”
But Hickory hears only fishy applause
and is swallowed at once by the shark’s hungry jaws.
His bride cries, “Oh woe!” and swims through the reeds
where she hides in the heel of a sailor’s old sock.
You know about those - I told you before;
how the mermaids will darn them;
like this one with stripes draped on the rocks.
Then a mermaid dives swiftly under the shark
and says to the shivering plaice,
“Come home with me to the land of Red Rocks
“and help me this evening darn ten sailors’ socks!”
BACK TO THE START!
Change of Season
Did you see the death of gold
lying sadly round the trees?
And leaves growing old,
laughing coldly at the breeze?
Did you hear Winter totter
through their bold, brazen heaps;
stumble into misty tree trunks
where he holds his breath and sleeps?
Now is the time to bolt the doors
and latch the windows tight.
For Winter will be bitter
in his loneliness at night.
BACK TO THE START!
The Spider
The creepy, crawly spider
is not a pretty pet.
But there are things about him
you are likely to forget.
You may not like his hairy legs
or little beady eyes,
but in the summer, who eats
all those irritating flies?
Perhaps you want to poke him
when you see him on the path.
Or wash him down the drainpipe
when he’s crawling round the bath.
But he is quite defenceless,
although he frightens you.
He has three times as many legs,
but wants to use them too.
So leave him to himself and he
won’t even know you’re there.
You’re quite a giant to him, you know;
to squash him isn’t fair.
And in the early Autumn
when the day is very new,
you’ll see the lovely silk he’s spun
especially for you.
BACK TO THE START!
Winter Sea
Winter seashores clamour in the gloom;
the raging wind demanding all the room,
impatient with the waves upon the shore
that break and slide to sea again for more.
The winds of seashores wrap around the rocks,
while Winter rides the waterways and mocks
at all the world upon the frozen waves,
repeating his derision in the caves.
BACK TO THE START!
Rock Pools
In shadows hidden from the sun;
clear water shot with green.
Unknown to almost everyone -
by little children seen.
The magic of these shallow pools
which lie along the shore,
is in the little speckled crabs
which glide across the floor;
is in the pearl shine of the shells,
the smooth, wet weed of the sea,
and armoured shellfish, which we all
so lightly eat for tea.
BACK TO THE START!
The Story of Jeremy Pitts
This is the story of Jeremy Pitts
who had uncontrollable laughing fits.
They would start with a chuckle and end with a roar
and no one knew what he was laughing for!
He was tall, he was thin
with a queer sallow skin,
a long nose and eyes that pierced like a pin.
His arms were like matchsticks,
his legs spindly too.
He nearly fell over when gusty winds blew.
One day walking home by the calm riverside,
a fit came upon him. He laughed till he cried.
High on the bank he leapt and careered.
Then Jeremy Pitts had disappeared.
The rings on the water, widened, were gone.
The sun on the water laughingly shone.
And though searches were made for miles around,
Jeremy Pitts was never found.
Author's Note
Linda Talbot writes fantasy for adults and children. She now lives in Crete and as a journalist in London she specialised in reviewing art, books and theatre, contributing a chapter to a book about Conroy Maddox, the British Surrealist and writing about art for Topos, the German landscape magazine. She has published "Fantasy B
ook of Food", rhymes, recipes and stories for children; "Five Rides by a River", about life, past and present around the River Waveney in Suffolk; short stories for the British Fantasy Society, and stories and poetry for magazines.
Contact blog: https://lindajtalbot.wordpress.com
BACK TO THE START!