Is it time? Poem by Vona Groarke

The children will be waiting for me
with blue veined arms and all tomorrow
slaked in the whites of their eyes.

They have knowledge, they assure me,
of how rain comes undone
and mornings thicken like milk.

They remember the story of the night
that popped itself inside out
and forgot all of its songs.

‘But what happened the moon?'
Picked up, shiny penny, by a woman
with too much air in her pockets,

spent on a word from a barrow-seller
and gifted, in turn, to a boy and a girl
who learn what becomes of it.