Highly commended

Maureen Gallagher from Galway, Ireland 

By The River

A group of young women with kids
camped by the riverbank, watch
the drift of cloud, the water lick
their toes, when a sudden sound
back beyond the long grass,
warns of how a current can take
a child off to a bed of sedge,
weed and algae - down to the dark.

A mother skims the stony ground,
broken, brittle, likely as glass
to rip a bare sole. She swoops,
to find her son alone, not lost,
just playing out of view. She rests;
examines her feet but not a mark.