A MOTHER’S trip on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal has inspired an international prize-winning poem.

Rae Howells, 40, was so impressed by her family’s visit along the canal that she wrote the poem Airlings.

She hired a narrow boat, Molly Moo, with husband Phil Poucher, 40, and children Gwennan, eight, and Mabli, four, for the trip from Barnoldswick.

Their visit took in the Five Rise Locks at Bingley and reached Apperley Bridge. Her poem was inspired by two dead rabbits, which her family saw on a mound of green waste during an evening walk.

The work was entered into this year’s International Welsh Poetry Competition, where it won first prize.

Entries into this year’s competition came from Wales, the UK and all over the world.

Rae, of Swansea, said: “There was something otherworldly about the light, the sky and the wind, and these two rabbits that seemed as if they might spring up and run off at any moment.

“It took a few weeks and many drafts to get the right words down on paper, but I’m so pleased that others have enjoyed the poem and seen something they like in it.”

The family have already paid a return visit to Yorkshire following their initial trip in April and she is already writing her next poem inspired by a walk she took on Malham Cove.

She added: “It’s a beautiful area and there’s so much to see and do.

“We live on Gower in South Wales and it is a stunning place to live, but we are lucky to have such a close connection with Yorkshire too, and try to come up as often as we can.”

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Rae said she had received interesting feedback from those who had read her poem.

She added: “It’s been interesting to hear the many interpretations people have brought to the poem.

“One lady contacted me and said she thought it was about soldiers in the trenches, another that it was about birds.

“That’s one of the things I love about poetry, the poet and the reader coming together to create something magical.”

The competition judges called Airlings “truly wonderful”.

Airlings by Rae Howells

Somebody has wrung them out
two old flannels
two un-eyed rabbits
as if the rain had hooked them from the air
twisted their lives out
wrung them out
two old flannels, loose knots
flung on a heap
flung
on a template of old bracken
and dry grass, moving,
shushing, shush,
or are those fierce whispers
urging wake, wake,
remember?
remember how you ran
into the air,
you could hardly keep your feet,
barely pricked the soft pasture
as you leapt, always trying to free yourself,
flinging yourself skyward
your face turned towards light
but dragging the needle’s thread
the heavy gold thread of yourself
you buttoned your soft weight into the rising of the hill,
paused to press down the ploughed soil with your feet,
small brown pin.
I see now, you were the earth’s beat,
her quick blood,
submitting to the arteries of the burrow
only for your dreams of the wind
among warm bodies strung, beads along the vessels,
rows of ears and feet,
each body a stitch in the seam,
you hemmed the earth and the sky.
Shush now, shush, old flannels, wrung out on a heap,
your legs stretched long on the old dry grass,
listen how the wind sings,
her longing fingers in your fur as she whispers –
come little airlings
unbutton yourselves
kick the light with your feet
the earth can hold herself awhile.