As a girl, I lost most of my time on the hillside.

It fattened the hedgerows

And got caught on barbed wire.

Some might say it was wasted,

All that youth washed away on wet afternoons

My feet warm inside wellingtons, even on icy days;

But now I see it was lost.

Like a keepsake, or a spoiled prize dropped in anger

It became overgrown and forgotten.

I found my old doll once,

Perched on a yew tree

Her face eaten in by insects.

I think of her often, her despoiling;

The pinafore on her dress

Stained red by berries.

Like her, I never found that time I lost –

That girlhood, which I had hoped

Would be pegged on the branches or propped on a stile.

Instead, I now look for that time inside myself

The stopped clock of childhood

Nesting between my ribs.

And I know that if I dug like a mole with long fingernails

Between the heavy lines frowned by my eyebrows

I might find there a small girl, cowering under my skin.