Highly commended in the published poets section of the 2020 Dunedin UNESCO Robert Burns Poetry Competition

Shadows, or: freethinking ourselves away                       when the world is grey

1.
when the shadows dance like this it is                                   just
enough to make you want
to pick up the balls of your feet and
tap your toes
            not a big show
but enough to know, enough to move and
make rhythm, enough to think of                                            breaking free

2.
do you remember when blue and black were                         just
blue and black? the blue of a crayon:
            an ocean, a sky, a marble, an eye

and black like coal, or night
orange and pink: bubblegum sunsets
red: revolution, change, fire under your skin
            and
                                                                                                in your heart

spin out, spin away, child
the fever of youth, the call of the wild

but what of grey,                                                                      just
           grey?
not like anything at all

maybe, like                                                                              dust

                                                                                                do you remember dust?

3.
when we were kids, we cut out shapes                                   just
the right size for our small hands
we glued them down, some neat, some not
the teacher scolded, sometimes
           – Draw inside the lines,
           make your letters slant

we painted glue on our fingers, let it harden, bent
it off in long sticky strands, smooth, translucent

once, you peeled a piece away and it looked
ghosty-grey                                                                             like a ship

we said then we’d sail across oceans – me
as star navigator and you with clouds                                     in your eyes

we said we’d build a boat and in our dreams

                                                                                                we believed it

we
said
our boat
would sail any
sea, with any wind,
and we cut out triangle
shapes, pasted them on the
grey classroom wall where they
floated all
year long

we dreamed of sailing oceans                                                 for months
and then the bell rang
and you moved
away