The Dirigible Balloon
Poetry for Children

Window Holiday

Listen to the poem ...
one breakfast I spill milk across the sky

two creamy calves stick out their tongues to slurp it up
from cirrostratus grass and on the clouds’ low slopes
a wisping steam train slowly lugs three carriages
of daffodils and insubstantial hopes

a pod of purple porpoises starts playing in my street
they hide-and-seek in nimbostratus foam
droplets from their blowholes spot the window glass
they mock me stuck inside and stuck at home

lumpy grey grumpily thumping a rumpus of elephants
fling my nimbusnimble little brother from their backs
as he falls I catch him as he crashes haul him in
splendorous splashes drench our chilly skin

then the evening phoenix in a flare of flames proclaims
the dragons are coming the dragons are dipping
to sip the sinking sun yes the dragons have come
to spit *F*I*R*E*W*O*R*K*S*

when did my disappointments disappear?

never mind the planes and where they go
imagination and the wind can blow
a window holiday right here

About the Writer


Catherine Olver

Catherine is a writer and researcher in children’s literature at the University of Cambridge. She has a special interest in how literature can help humans respect nature, but she loves reading, writing, and teaching poetry on all topics. Some of her other poems have been published in the Emma Press anthologies of Love and Kings and Queens and in The Goose journal.