Zooming in by Sharon Phillips

I can see it on Google Earth, 

the hillside cluttered with brambles

where one day I turned my ankle 

and sniffed back snot and tears

as we scrambled to the top;

on the brow of the hill we stopped 

to look back: at houses and flats; 

the salt marsh checkered by rhynes; 

the smokestacks of ships in the docks 

and khaki fumes from the chemical works; 

the silver glint of the Bristol Channel 

and over the water, Wales;

then on we rushed, past cabbage fields, 

through the wood’s green hush 

to the pond, carrying jars for newts 

we caught to take home: quick 

and brown, yellow bellies spotted black. 

Mine lived in a seaside bucket 

until I got bored or forgot.

I zoom in to find the wood, exactly 

as I remember it, though the fields are 

covered in barns, the salt marsh striped 

by a motorway’s asphalt. However hard 

I look, there is no trace of the pond.

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Sharon started learning to write poems a few years ago, after she retired from her career in education. Her poems have been published online and in print, and have been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize (2017), the Indigo Firsts pamphlet competition (2018) and the WoLF Poetry Competition (2019). Sharon won the Borderlines Poetry Competition in 2017 and was among the winners of the Poetry Society Members’ Competition in November 2018. She lives on the Isle of Portland, in Dorset.