The burn

Boredom makes us do it, that and the chase.
The sun whitens the grass until it's ripe
to burn and then we light it, watch and wait.

The flames take the land, they come and we run.
Us in our shorts, them in their gear, too
clumsy to run but fast because they're men.

We're laughing and falling, stumbling and rolling
safe if not caught, too young to worry
about the dead birds and black landscape.



From Gawain Barnard's photography exhibition, as previewed on A Fine Beginning: Made in Wales, BBC News In Pictures, 14 March 2014. Words omitted: 'and then' (line 4), 'and' (7), 'from the burn' (8), 'broken land' (9). Submitted by Gabriel Smy.

This is her

Names have power,
so let us speak of hers.

Her name is Sharbat Gula,
and she is Pashtun,

that most warlike of Afghan tribes.
It is said of the Pashtun

that they are only at peace
when they are at war,

and her eyes�then and now�
burn with ferocity.

She is 28, perhaps 29, or even 30.
No one, not even she, knows for sure.

Stories shift like sand
in a place where no records exist.



From 'A Life Revealed', by Cathy Newman, National Geographic, April 2002. Submitted by Angi Holden.