tiny revolutions

	     this weather sounds
	     like a poem brewing
	     children make me feel

too much all at once
parentified as I am
I see two toddlers

	     in the park grasping
	     tiny tennis rackets
	     how many times

must this catch my mind
off guard this orbital life
blown open by a child’s

	     laugh and a patient
	     mother waiting amid
	     summer wind and rain

Mary Jean Chan is the author of Flèche (Faber, 2019), which won the Costa Book Award for Poetry. Bright Fear (Faber, 2023), Chan’s second book, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection and the Dylan Thomas Prize. Chan is Departmental Lecturer in Poetry on the MSt in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford and lives in Oxford.