Category Archives: Nature

House Building

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Two magpies stalk across the building site,
Ruffled by the cold wind through the thorn hedge.
I don’t really know what they hope to find
In this wasteland of concrete and gravel.
Perhaps next year when the grass is growing,
There’ll be crusts thrown from our kitchen window.
Are they looking for building materials
Among the curled shavings and the rubble?
They’re welcome to share ours around the plot,
Especially as there are two of them
which always augurs well for the future.

3rd April 1971

Summer chase

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Hare Summer leads a chase along the lanes
And scatters torn up sunlight under trees
And on the banks where wild garlic grows
Among the heavy headed grasses.
Your house lies in his path along the marsh
Near where the golden willows burst with leaf
And watch-spring bracken day by day unwinds
Among cow pats and clumps of almond gorse.
Inside the house the afternoon sleeps cool
Behind the dark blue blinds. Above the stove
The honey-coloured cat stirs in his sleep,
The tap drips in the sink and china laid for tea
Waits on the tray.
Beneath the hedge among the unpruned trees
We lie asleep or love-make in the sun.

May 1968

Branchage

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Potato fields
Are empty;
Haulms turn brown
In the sun.
All along
Country lanes
Sickles cut
Deep into
June grasses.
Red campions
And nettles
Fall with vetch
And yarrow.
The shorn lanes
Are wider
And sadder.
Tomorrow
Men with rods
Will pass here
To measure
The clearance,
Fining each
Landowner
For any
Obstruction.

1971