Camping
Much giggling and small cruelties among us girls
as we learned to build shelter from our new vocabulary:
groundsheet, tent-pegs, fly sheet, mallet, ridge-pole,
cleat. We soon learned not to touch the canvas
when it poured, else weather would leap in
to play with us; we learned that guy-ropes
must be tightened or loosened in the stumbling
soaking dark depending on the rain.
For some, a camp is not a choice.
Their days stretch into weeks,
weeks melt into months,
months grind into years.
We learned that ground was not as soft as beds,
sun rose long before school-time, night
was blacker than the cupboard under the stairs,
spiders and mosquitos skittered through the gaps,
it was either too cold or hot, our clothes
were always damp, the porridge was lumpy and burnt.
For some, a camp is not a choice.
Their days stretch into weeks,
weeks melt into months,
months grind into years.
Later, there were festivals with seas of pop-up tents,
tripping and stumbling to find ours at night
when they all looked the same, fields glooped away
in mud, hungover noise and press, the stench
of long-drop toilets. Three days was enough.
For some, a camp is not a choice.
Their days stretch into weeks,
weeks melt into months,
months grind into years.
Maggie Butt is an English poet who has published five poetry books, one pamphlet, one e-book/MP3 and an edited collection of essays. Her latest collection Degrees of Twilight was published in July 2015 by The London Magazine. She is principal editor of the creative writing journal Writing in Practice. Her poetry has been published in international magazines and been turned into choreography and a mobile phone app.
Maggie Butt’s first pamphlet Quintana Roo was published by Acumen Publications in 2003. Sancti Clandestini – Undercover Saints, , is a fully illustrated poetry collection, which proposes some alternative, imaginary saints, including the Patron Saints of liars, looters, rank outsiders, compulsive hoarders, old dogs and infidel girls.