This parental reverie is by Rachel Burns, who was shortlisted for the Keats-Shelley Adult Poetry Prize 2017. It can be found in the Autumn 17 issue of the literary publication Southlight 22 (Wigtown Festival Company, £5).
SIGHTSEERS
We visit the same haunts every year
our children’s lives marked
~
by brightly coloured pins
in the Ordnance Survey map.
~
Charting stumbling toddler years
to teenage angst, until they disappear
~
from camera view, exams taking hold
and later preferring to travel
~
further and wider, backpacking
across Europe, sleeping in hostels
~
cooling their heels on the InterRail car.
Yet when we travel, we carry
~
the memory of the children
they once were, through city trails
~
across familiar landscapes, the hillsides
the beaches, the hundred acre woods.
~
We hear our children’s laughter
in the grounds of ruined castles
~
running up the steep steps on cliff walks.
Voices shouting over crashing waves.
~
We stand on high bridges
looking down over the edge
~
awed by the sheer drop.
It is if they have never left us.
~
We are sightseers still.
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