Dualtagh Grundy's award-winning poem
Picking Bilberries
It was Spring.
We peeped through the fence.
We were four brothers
looking for adventure.
Next to our cottage was a wood
owned by a crazy farmer.
Most of the time he didn't notice us scurrying in the trees.
But once, he appeared with a big, red face
so we hid behind a dry stone wall
in long grass with an old sink, a broken bike and muddy flowerpots.
In our tiny garden a pond where we plopped our water flower bulbs
and waited . . .
Once, we saw a frog there.
Green and slimy with black stripes.
Before we knew it it had jumped into our porch,
then our kitchen, then our living room.
We all jumped up and down.
That day, our neighbour was in his shed.
We called to him at the tops of our voices.
Then, off we marched, big, little and littler
following a path with nettles on either side.
We passed the park and went off the track over
a wall with barbed wire.
Then, another passage to some bilberries.
We picked and picked and picked.
Our shorts and tops and cheeks were purpled and juicy.
Then, we followed the greenish, yellowish grass to a dizzy cliff
of heather infinity
and went to the edge with popping ears
where we saw fields of sheep.
We sucked our bilberries and they their grass.
Chomp, chomp, chomp.
Our neighbours wife made us some
creamy-chocolately-butterfly buns
and orange ice lollies.
We pulled back the curtains to see the farmer
but he had gone
and we laughed and laughed and laughed.