When I was a little girl, my mum
found all my clothes at jumble sales
and in this bold, creative garb, a gift
from the bodies of other local girls,
I danced my way through all my Lancashire summers.
If anybody asked me (as they often did)
where this skirt or that dress came from,
it was a family joke that I should tell them,
my clothes had been bought in “a boutique in Southport,”
Southport being shorthand, down our way,
for all things sparkling, exuberant, aspirational.
Today I walked to Pennyseorach, and the coast
where I looked towards England,
and thought of the dance of yesterday,
in a Lancashire seaside town.
By the caravans, atop a picnic table,
a small girl stood, raising her arms, and elegantly bending,
inspired, no doubt, by Simone Biles or Becky Downie
Taylor Swift or Abi Martin ;
their bold, creative bodies,
their sparkling, exuberant garb.
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