Immortal Child Poem by Steffi Webster

Through the fields and meadows.
Over bluff and dale.
Through the heat and cold,
In burning sun and freezing hale
Stones and earth the mattress,
Grass and bracken bed.
Fingers of a wild moor moss
For her to rest her head.
Drift wilderness wanderer
Forever and a day.
Singing in the wind and trees
The little girl will play.
Hollow lilting echoes
Beckon round the valley,
Always shifting, moving on,
Never halt or tarry.
Lightest footsteps smooth the moss
And fades beneath the eye.
Haunting child is gone again,
Knows not to say goodbye.
Time goes on. An adult world
Relinquishes its glare.
Shielded by a wall of mist
Left without a care.
Round the corner hear her laugh,
Glimpse her sunny smile.
In the rocks and leaves and twigs
She skips a merry mile.
Lost alone so long ago,
Bereft the family fled.
She’s roaming far along the heath,
Young child alive or dead.