Amy Chapple. Cornwall

Caught! Green-Handed

​

On the trackbed of the old Caradon railway is a lad on a BMX,

leopard print frame, begging to be noticed,

with florescent green hands and a spray can in his back pocket.

He nods - a what's up? bob of the head - as he pedals past, 

face half-obscured with a snood, a grinning skull's jaw -

to go raise hell on a school night. The village boys like it down here,

off the path and on the grass, to hotbox the abandoned depot

that was once a site for copper ore, but is now filled

with adolescent treasure: tinnies and the girls from St. Cleer.

I like it here too — the wheeling buzzards overhead,

our labradoodles dogtrotting up the stone sleepers

to the Neolithic fortification of Stowe's Pound, to the citadel:

Bodmin Moor's ancient tor. To find it has been defaced.

The Cheesewring: oval Jenga-blocks of granite, teetering

on the edge of Stowe's Hill, grey and... florescent green, still wet.