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.