The Lost World

The last fund raise before moving to new buildings.
Old books sold off, old books forever young.
Careful Hans, Milly Molly Mandy,
Just William, Biggles Flies South.
My progress into the gift of literacy and the blessings of fantasy.

Deep in the pile, a torn spine, frayed,
caught my eye, my breath,
that remembered brown jacket, Ah!
‘Wind in the Willows’
The name label inside,
July 1940. Class 4. K Marsden.
May 1941. Class 4. M Hollingdrake.
May 1943 .Class 4. A Seeley!
O, my! O, my!

Days I lost myself in The Wild Wood;
wandered The Open Road.
Thin sunlight through long windows,
afternoons in a crowded classroom
of a stone school in a town, grimed and smogged,
but we were Wayfarers All,
with a stick and a pack
and the call of the dusty road ahead.
I curled with Portly
between the cloven hooves
of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn;
rolled with Moley through buttercups, O my,
down meadows filled with sweet spring grass;
trailed idly-drifting-afternoon fingers
along the shining skin of a brown river,
my elbow on a hamper filled with the picnic of dreams;
chased the mayfly's scintillance with Otter
and watched the glistening rings of his departure
shimmer and fade as years glitter and die.

The murmur of the storytelling trees
the sibilance of tales woven by the winds
whispered from a battered brown cover.

‘All books 5p each’
Nothing for everything;
A bauble might purchase the world.