This was how it was when I was a child and pea-picking time
came round. Five in the morning, mothers up and down the tiny
streets would wake you up until, stumbling, you fell down the
wooden stairs, crashed into the closed door at the bottom, fell
through and drank any cup of tea laid out on the table. A bite
of bread and then the sound of the lorry horn. ‘Out! Out! Out!
everyone shouted and out we went to sit on the lorry trailer,
already full of farm smells but giving another chance to smell
the hedgerows and trees until we got to the pea field. That was
when it was fine and sunny – a different story when it was siling
down with heavy cold rain!

PEA PODS AND PROMISES

Pea pods and pea straws
And fields of green oceans
As far as the eye can see,
And busy little children
Building pea-straw houses
Or getting lost in the green fields
As their mothers pull peas.

They were all told
To keep away from the small river
Where the Kingfisher flew,
Enchanting those who saw
The blue blur, blue on blue.
Tempting one child or another
To slide into the water.

Languorous now, the afternoon wears on,
The sun emptying those green oceans,
The red tractor silent
As little children are found and woken.
Bags weighed,
Coins counted one by one
Into green-dirty hands,
Ready for the waiting corner-shop man.

Time to climb onto the lorry.
Time to go home.

Everything will have changed
In the year that is yet to come,
But the fields will still be full
Of quiet green oceans bringing hope
Of a new harvest.

                                   © GWEN GRANT