Carol Ann Duffy — Stafford Afternoons

Only there, the afternoons could suddenly pause and when I looked up from lacing my shoe a long road held no one, the gardens were empty, an ice-cream van chimed and dwindled away. On the motorway bridge, I waved at the windscreens oddly hurt by the blurred waves back, the speed. So I let a horse in the noisy field sponge at my palm and invented, in colour, a vivid lie for us both. In a cul-de-sac a strange boy threw a stone. I crawled through a hedge into long grass at the edge of a small wood, lonely and thrilled. The green silence gulped once and swallowed me whole. I knew it was dangerous, the way the trees drew sly faces from light and shade, the wood let out its sticky breath on the back of my neck and flowering nettles gathered spit in their throats. Too late. Touch said the long haired man who stood, legs apart, by a silver birch, with a living, purple root in his hand. The sight made sound rush back; birds, a distant lawnmower, his hoarse, frightful endearments as I backed away and ran all the way home; into a game where children scattered and shrieked and time fell from the sky like a red ball.