A little hill felt as if you were climbing to the top of the world, You just collapsed at the top, Onto the new green bilberry bushes Where the rain trickled onto small leaves, Dribbled onto the earth, And sank into the soil.

The view was spectacular, It really made you feel energetic again.

It was like a big paint box, Where all the colours had run into each other, Making blotches of yellow, crimson and green.

It reminded me of a bed where sheep were the pillows, And the fields a patchwork quilt.

The sky was grey and dull like an old man’s beard Hanging down from the sky, Comforting the cotton wool sheep.

It was so peaceful even though you could hear The pattering of the rain, And the splashing of the river below.

By Rebecca Elliott, 10, who receives Chasing the Sun; a journey around the world in verse (Simon and Schuster), edited by Sally Bacon. Submitted by Lindsay Fox of Gladstone Road County Junior School, Scarborough, North Yorkshire, who receives the Poetry Society teachers’ newsletter.

So many people are reluctant to use placenames in poems, yet whenever you come across one - as in this poem’s Danby Rigg - the effect is to make you feel that not any place but one particular place is being written about. This is backed up by the specific detail of the “green bilberry bushes”, and the view of the fields, and the overheard river. Perhaps seeing the fields as a patchwork quilt, and the grey sky as on old man’s beard, is a bit familiar, but I liked better the paint box where the colours had run into each other. And the poem opens and closes well.