'Our World' & 'The World of Regrets'

Two more poems in our series of entries for the Junior Poetry Prize.

'Our World' by Dearbhala Gernon, III form

A young Irish girl,
in a Protestant boarding school,
weeps.
She misses her father,
his absence is unfamiliar,
she knows he is distant,
but not his distance.

"I want to see you,"
she cries down the phone,
his tone becomes tender.

"you would have to cross our world"
he says,
"swim the Irish sea,
catch a train across England,
flap your wings over to Paris,
buy a croissant and beret there."

"I would," she said.

"hop over the border to Milan,
straighten their tower of Pisa,
dig an tunnel to Kiev,
and taste their chicken."

"I would," she said.

"polka dance across Russia,
stop in Moscow for some borsht,
and kayak over the sea of Okhotsk"

"I would," she said.

The phone line went dead,
to her father frantically repeating her name,

she was sent home that day,
suspended,
for escaping from school,
and paddling in the Irish shore.

The World of Regrets by Juliana Huggard, III form

He could have been a policeman

He could have been there for Dan

He could have been a teacher

He could have been a preacher

He shouldn’t have got kicked out

He shouldn’t have freaked out

He shouldn’t have got drunk

He shouldn’t have bashed into that tree trunk

I shouldn’t have kicked him out

I shouldn’t have given him doubt

if he wanted to live or not

I shouldn’t have let him rot

I shouldn’t have grabbed that knife

I shouldn’t have ended his life

I shouldn’t have lied

About the way he died