April Poetry 2016/09

Witch's Hovel

Rain patters on the curved corrugated iron

left over when dad dug out the Anderson shelter

We've made a den of it, me and the boy from down the road

with walls made from scavenged pallets

sheets of plastic thumb-tacked to the outside to keep the rain out.

In the spring we'll cover it in mud bricks

painted dry with lime and whitewash

with a window salvaged from the old cow shed

after Eddie Fowler burned it down

because he likes to watch the flames.

The rain drips in where the screws used to be

but we bodge them with plasticine

and light a fire in the hole

we scooped out with an empty peach can.

In our minds this is a palace in the making

but Dad wants his potato patch back.