22nd March 2020

bright sunshine
warming my back
mud-puddled dog

© Rachel Green 2020

milk in glass bottles
the empties collected
by the morning morning
it was how we grew up.
Pop bottles
with a ten-pence deposit
returned to the shop;
beer bottles, cider,
even tin cans were worth a penny.
We recycled everything
and the Keep Britain Tidy campaign
was taken seriously.
Aki and I
stealing empty bottles
from the back of the Crown on Withybed Lane
;
taking them round to the outside counter
until the landlady got wise to us.


© Rachel Green 2020