Robert Nisbet

July, July, July

Term trickling hotly to a close,
shirt sticking, sun on summer desk.
And then the evenings, spud picking
as part of Winston’s casual gang.
Potato drills, the sudden creamy glow.
The older women, cookie-tough,
who’d squat down for a leak as soon
as look at you. Bad backache too,
but we were near three bob an hour.
Five Woodbines, chips in Dev’s for that.

School over, cricket. Down front paths,
against the walls, in streets, on greens.
The concentration deep. Slow spin
with a tennis ball, dobbed fatly down.

Our camp a six-day interlude
in a field of cow pats black with flies.
Sausages hacked and dragged from tins
but hungry, we got to the local dance,
girls vivid in our wonderment.

August, that cloudburst, rain for days.
And that was it. Next year exams.

Robert Nisbet is a Welsh poet, a now-retired English teacher and college lecturer, who wrote short stories for forty years (with seven collections) and has now turned to poetry, being published widely in both Britain and the USA, where he is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee.