Tag Archives: nature

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

Race against time

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Time was lethargic
In those early days,
Taking his rhythm
From a sluggish clock
High on the classroom wall.
He dragged his feet
At every turn,
Advancing Christmas
All too slowly,
Droning on endlessly
In Sunday sermons.
Only at nightfall,
Colluding with parents,
Did he hasten his pace
To get us to bed.
He was a spoilsport
of the worst kind,
Always hanging around
But not really with us.

He showed his true colours
In the season of shooting stars,
Never waiting for me.
Never looking over his shoulder
But setting a stiff pace
with leaps and bounds,
Like a boy out of school
Vaulting flooded ditches,
Taunting: “Come on, slow coach!”
I had no choice but to follow,
My feet ever heavier,
His pace quickening at each stile.
There was no pity in him,
No hint of comradeship,
And I knew that, in the end,
He would forge ahead alone
And abandon me gasping,
Face downwards in the mud.

November 1991

Mimosa

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When I smell mimosa
I remember the hill
With our school half way down
And the sea far below.
We ran there happily
At the start of each day.
And climbed home reluctant
In the afternoon heat.
At a bend in the hill
Where the sea fell from view,
An ancient mimosa
Hung over the wall.
The flowers touched the clouds
And its roots reached the sea,
Its scent fell around us
As we ran underneath.

When I smell mimosa
I remember the hill
With our school half way down
And the sea far below ……

March 1982