Abandoned Outport Sun on boarded windows and gull-cries high in the August clouds. On a small beach-path: blue-bells nodding over driftwood. A bee is buzzing inside dark cracks in a window pane. Clover meadow: above the rusting ploughshare a butterfly. A sudden fog and sea-winds bend the sting-nettle. Deep in graveyard grass snails and lichens cling to the headstone. Across the schoolhouse floor: paper scraps, dry sea-weed and a dead moth. Against the cold twilight: dark picket-fences and a crow's flight. In a rising moon: a church steeple and lilac leaves.

Reread the Tom Dawe poem. Now settle in your mind on a place other than the one described in Tom Dawe's poem, and/or with a different atmosphere. mood and feeling... for instance it might not be a place of absence. but a place full of activity, excitement and promise; or it might be urban rather that rural; or it might be primarily an interior space rather than an exterior one.... Your choice. Now, rewrite the poem by replacing the words one by one. Use the same line breaks but replace all of the images... replace all of the nouns1 verbs, adjectives and adverbs with other words that are, in each case (more or less), the same part of speech. Other parts of speech (conjunctions. prepositions, articles) you can leave or change just as you like or need to