The Ginger
A quart of ginger-beer in a 'stone' jar (A salt-glaze jar) with a glassy black screw top, Red rubber ring, shoved in a saddle-bag Then ridden bumpily up a hill in Montgomery.
Then bumpity-thump along the unmade track Over the peaty shoulders of Moel something, Between the bents and the shaved leaning reeds By pin-leg blackface and the skirling crows, By the crag with a thorn and the crumbs of the fallen farm And the sequin wavelets of the giggling llyn To the view, and the glory of the great free-wheel Thumpity-bumpity down a hill in Radnor.
We climbed off then, all in a young muck-sweat, Priestley and I, and chucked the bikes down Into the Queen-Anne's-lace of the lane-side And chucked ourselves too, breathless and laughing, In a great bed of the lace, under high elms, Staring at a steady whiteface in the blue, Rubbing sore knees stuck out of short shorts, Feeling the tickle of kex on the backs of them.
And opened the ginger: which after its thrilling ride Went off like a bomb, foam flying in the air, Freckling his freckles and speckling his chest, Throwing a brown lace over the white ones And amber drops on the dandelion's golden face.
Hilary Corke
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