Buxton Spoken Words

 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