Few of us can capture a child’s reticence and awe like Robert Ford has in this poem about a kindergarten encounter. You can find more great poems and learn more about this poet who lives in Scotland on his blog, Weezlehead.
It wasn’t quite my first day there, and while I sat at the safety
of a long wooden table, a mile-wide belt of asteroid children
fizzed about the hall, high on screams and random collisions,
pounding its feet on a sprung floor all glassy with new varnish.
Her long-fingered hands were working the grown-up scissors,
the chafing of the blades against each other making that noise
I still don’t know the word for. You’re very patient, she told me,
freeing me from my cosmic reveries like one of the starfish
she was busily fashioning from a stack of coloured card.
– Robert Ford
First published in Red Eft Review
Sarah Russell Poetry 