Charles Causley's Eden Rock (#poem)

Eden Rock

They are waiting for me somewhere beyond Eden Rock:

My father, twenty-five, in the same suit

Of Genuine Irish Tweed, his terrier Jack

Still two years old and trembling at his feet.

My mother, twenty-three, in a sprigged dress

Drawn at the waist, ribbon in her straw hat,

Has spread the stiff white cloth over the grass.

Her hair, the colour of wheat, takes on the light.

 

She pours tea from a Thermos, the milk straight

From an old H.P. sauce-bottle, a screw

Of paper for a cork, slowly sets out

The same three plates, the tin cups painted blue.

 

The sky whitens as if lit by three suns.

My mother shades her eyes and looks my way

Over the drifted stream. My father spins

A stone along the water. Leisurely,

 

They beckon to me from the other bank.

I hear them call, 'See where the stream-path is!

Crossing is not as hard as you might think.'

 

I had not thought it would be like this. 

-Charles Causley

One more Charles Causley and I'm done with the book for now. This is likely his most famous poem; at any rate it's the one I first saw anthologized and made me want to read more. It comes from his final book of poetry for adults, which came out when he was 71, though he lived on fifteen years after and wrote several more books of verse for children.