MANY CHILDREN AGO

an old broken doll
remembers her first Christmas
many children ago

now only the rain
plays with her hair

*

Whilst "helping" me in the garden...sifting sand like flour...Tilly discovered an eye looking up at her..."The ground is looking at me!" It turned out to be a broken Victorian doll who was glad to see us after all this time and adopted us at once. To my little one this old thing was a living being just like her self and she cried and cried and cried. She slept that night with dreams pouring out of her porcelain skull with a Tilly cuddled up beside her.

I was teaching my little 8 year olds how to write a haiku so I wrote this on the blackboard...it just emerged from the chalk! I had started to show them how with the extra two lines we could extend it into a tanka and was working on it when the bell went and so...it just remained as it was...work in progress..