I have decided to return from silence! I am still new to the world of blogging, and I felt for a time that it was rather akin to knocking gently against a wall and receiving no answer. I look forward to hearing from those who do read new work, especially poems, and who want to be in touch. My email address, via my website, is: info@kennethsteven.co.uk. This is a short message on a summer evening: yesterday evening when coming back from my writing cabin in Highland Perthshire a poem came to me. Of course it had to be scribbled on the bus, and on the back of a scrap of paper, but I suppose that often the strongest things are. They tend always to come from nowhere - poems especially - and that arrival from silence is hugely special. So here is the poem:
Twelve
The way once upon a time it was:
when nights lay empty with their birdsong,
and the sun all swollen red went down,
and you among the boys went running
a whole hill upwards into dusk -
where the badger setts lay shadowed
and stillness danced with midges all around.
Then you knew there might be magic -
perhaps a falling star, or fox cubs,
or the finding of a cave that no-one else had seen.
Most of all it was the thrill of this -
the being twelve years old and knowing sure
that all the summer lay ahead and many more,
that it was yours like wild fruit heavy, ready -
in fields and fields and fields far out of sight.
