Fern Hill (After Dylan Thomas)

As I was young and uneasy far from the apple boughs,
About the silent house, unhappyas the streets were grey,
The sun above me cold and flat,
Life held me tight and sighing
Caught in the turmoil of my time,
And forgotten among commuters
I was lost in the timeless town
So when I sank to sleep
the farm peopled my dreams
Faded from colour to white
Down the rivers of the windfall night.
 And as I was dark and burdened,
alone among the stars,
Sitting in the school and listening
as the farm was born
In the poem that was young once more,
Time let me stretch and be
Golden in the mercy of his words,
And new and golden
I was loved and farmer, the fields
Rang to my touch,
the sunlight on the hills
shone clear and bold
And the spirit sang, glowing
In the ripples of the flowing streams.
All the day long it was humming,
it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as my home,
the sound of the swallow, it was free
And flying, food and water
And green as flame.
The sungrew round that very day.
Nothing I cared, in my sky blue daze,
that soil and mortar
In their dust and drying
and the cobwebs of dying things
Clung to the soles of my feet
Fir I sang in my chains like the sea.

 Jane Upchurch