Sheenagh Pugh teaches creative writing at the University of Glamorgan. She has won many prizes including the Arts Council of Wales Book of the Year award. Her books include Sing for the Taxman, Id's Hospit, Kirstie's Witnesses and Selected Poems (Seren). The Extra I forget which film (black-and-white, thirties) has a crowd scene, a liner leaving port, and among the extras at the ship's rail stands an old man with a rather distinctive hat and a wistful face, waving his farewells to the extras on shore, among whom, with a rather distinctive hat, by some continuity cock-up he also stands. I hope the director didn't give him hell for wrecking the shot, because no moment has moved me more. So many voyagers since the world began, leaving one self, one country, one life, for another, and never a man embarks, without looking back at what stays behind: the face, translucent as a sloughed snakeskin, the thin figure, fading at the edges, who raises a hand slowly, in a gesture that aches in the bones all the way to the other side. The Boy With a Cloud in His Hand He hasn't got much: not a roof, nor a job, nor any great hopes, but he's got a cloud in his hand and he thinks he might squeeze till the rain falls over the town, and he thinks he might tease the cottonwool fluff into strands of thin mist, and blank everything out, and he thinks he might blow this dandelion clock so high, it will never come down, and he thinks he might eat it, a taste of marshmallow sliding inside him, filling him up with emptiness, till he's all space, and he thinks, when he's hollow and full, he might float away.