Category Archives: Animals

Three thrushes in the lane

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Three thrushes in the lane
Looking at the ivied
Wall of the front garden.
“Rare sight,” we both exclaimed.
Two hardly moved when we
Drove past into the yard,
The third took fright and made
A low level flight deep
Into the hawthorn hedge
Where he was quickly lost
In the white May blossom.

Giant Tortoises

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Was this the one that carried on its back
The elements of the Earth and caused to break,
By each seismic step, the bulging crust
And fire to flow along the widening cracks?
Was this the one that sightless Aesop knew,
Which furnished fables to a later sage,
And served as tutor to the Roman troop,
Their corporate armour modelled on its shell?

The sun burns down and drifting sand blows through
The whitened carapace but legends live.

Seychelles 1969

Honeysuckle Hedgehog

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There’s a hedgehog in the woodbine
Beside the garden gate,
Who goes out walking every night
When it is very late.
Our Tuppy doesn’t like him,
He barks and jumps around,
He really doesn’t understand
Why hedgehog makes no sound
But rolls himself into a ball
And lies there very still,
Till Tuppy loses patience
As playful puppies will.
For Tuppy loves his basket
Upon the bedroom floor,
He goes in when they call him
And Grandpa locks the door.
But hedgehog is nocturnal
And when we are a-bed,
He does his midnight shopping
And sleeps all day instead.

3 September 1979