Tag Archives: summer

Honeysuckle Hedgehog

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There’s a hedgehog in the woodbine
Beside the garden gate,
Who goes out walking every night
When it is very late.
Our Tuppy doesn’t like him,
He barks and jumps around,
He really doesn’t understand
Why hedgehog makes no sound
But rolls himself into a ball
And lies there very still,
Till Tuppy loses patience
As playful puppies will.
For Tuppy loves his basket
Upon the bedroom floor,
He goes in when they call him
And Grandpa locks the door.
But hedgehog is nocturnal
And when we are a-bed,
He does his midnight shopping
And sleeps all day instead.

3 September 1979

Summer Days

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We took our teddies on the beach,
My cousin Camilla and I.
The golden sands reached down to the sea
And the sea stretched away to the sky.
We played all day by the edge of the tide
With the seagulls circling high,
And at night we dreamt of our day on the beach,
The teddies, Camilla and I.

August 1982

Down the Gullies

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The silver sandbanks beckon me
Towards the ebbing sea,
So down I go with shrimping net
And sandwiches for tea.

My favourite gullies stretch away
Towards a distant land
Where sea meets sky beyond the rocks
And bars of untrod sand.

This is the shore where Neptune reigns,
Where mermaids swim and play,
Where tides stand still before they turn
To rise, then flow away.

Among the rocks a thousand pools
Lie cool and green and deep,
With seaweed forests still and dark
All seemingly asleep.

But in their depths the blennies dart
And green crabs hide and dig,
The hermits scuttle out of sight,
Their shells a shade too big.

Here all is calm and I’m alone,
The sun moves on his way
Across the cloudless summer sky
Towards the end of day.

The tide has turned, it’s time to go
Back to the distant shore;
My jam jar’s full of shrimps and crabs,
Tomorrow there’ll be more.

For Helier, Lucy and Bessie – August 1979