In the hollow (rough)

All that summer long, I ran, when I was 10, with windmill arms and wind-snatched breath, my brown, bare legs flashing quick and crosshatched with careless pricker scrapes; danced one-two double spinning rhythms, casting small-girl spells on the blacktop and across the verge, in among the dark boles, tapping in and out, double-time, running hollows, where the newts splashed out in the wet green hours, and I grew to know the pussy willow spring and seed-pod autumn, growing round and alien; knew the briar-tangle den, where, gone to ground, I lay hidden from the hard hands and jagged voices and dreamed green underwater dreams as the evening drew out long and violet, and the night creatures sang their soft night songs as the dusk wrapped itself around us.