Growing up in a Big County
Norfolk has such big skies, they always say
and yes it does but that sky was never a sky
but an airspace with no space for anything
but the jets to fly. Only the Bomb-watchers
waited out for the clouds.
The birds had all gone.
Norfolk has such wide landscapes they always say
and yes it does: so much the easier for it bc
a free fire zone, all ambitions carelessly mown down.
Like the hedges that weren’t there.
In the end, there was always the horizon
stretched like a taut wire across the throat
of the land.
Only the radar dishes and the missiles
ever dared look up.
Mark Johnson
