Alice, in her new, red-hooded coat,
late afternoon in spring-and-sunlight garden,
watches bubbles float a hundred rainbows
round her head. And she has endless time
for ants, the weeping tracery of snails,
for raindrops, tiny feathers,
and all the small eternities she sees
in pebbles on the gravel path.
Alice knows, as poets do,
that life is slow. If she had words
she’d let her Grandma know this April day
will never end. But poor Grandma
pretends the world moves fast,
thinks bubbles always burst; imagines
shadows racing through the woods,
hears something knocking, howling at her door.
By Annie Fisher
This poem came second in our 2013 Poems Please Me competition
Artist: Harry Ibach
Open a slideshow by The Artists’ Quarter of all the illustrations created for this particular poem. Photograph of Alice with Bubbles.
