To the child at the window

 

The fields hemmed in by hedgerows green with thorn and briar;

by cloud, stream and drain;

May’s champagne celebration:

the exquisite snow of hawthorn’s white blossom.

The soft pillowed hills latticed with limestone walls

built of lichened white moons;

the cloud-mediated light

spread evenly across the expanse of heaven and earth.

The poles that carry the wires

that carry conversations humming by the roadsides;

the roads that flow like streams from the town,

eventually bending into unseen countryside.

The world that is not known

the darknesses beneath sycamore and ash,

the guessed at activities of slinking foxes and shuffling badgers;

the forests and cities, the peoples out beyond those hills.

To the child at the window,

a universe without borders or boundaries,

understood as it is imagined,

as free as it is wide.