He has offered me a sparrow.
What more could I ask?
Thousands of feathers
Ruffle. A wallet for a heart.
I am gathered like a fly
To touch its wing.
“You are worth much more”
He whispers “You are”
I smell a fossil in autumn
With the sea rushing in.
And grating sand
On a raincoat: salt-grey.
He has offered me a sparrow.
Grace Bucknill
* One of the things I say to pupils when taking workshops in schools is that I want them to surprise themselves with their own daring, as Laurence Olivier used to say.
For me, Grace Bucknill’s “Offering” falls into this category, it being a series of charged, sensual images that evoke desire touched by loss. I’m not sure whose wallet is being referred to, but I like the metaphor. And “gathered like a fly” carries a suggestion of entrapment, which provides a nice sense of tension, keeping mawkishness at bay. I also like the way the poem moves through sounds, smells, textures and colours in the last six lines, leading us to read the repeated first line at the end with a very different feeling from when we first encountered it.
Anthony Wilson
Grace Bucknill, aged 17, receives ‘Emergency Kit’, edited by Jo Shapcott and Matthew Sweeney (Faber) . Submitted by Carol Bromley of All Saints’ RC School in York, who receives a set of Poetry Society posters with teacher’s notes. Please send students’ poems to ‘TES’ Young Poet, Admiral House, 66-68 East Smithfield, London E1 9XY. Anthony Wilson is Poetry Society poet-in-residence for primary education, and the author of ‘How Far From Here Is Home?’ (Stride) and co-edited ‘The Poetry Book for Primary Schools’ (Poetry Society).
