POETRY

BOLD

From the field-edge, a tunnel through tall grass
is snaking round the rampant brambles’ reach,
passed willowherb and thistles six feet tall —
a local fox has used this track all year.

Emerging in our garden in dense shade,
below a canopy of hazel boughs,
he soft-foots through the ferns and onto grass.
Casually he lopes towards the house, stops

to drink from border’s hidden pool, then checks
below bird feeders for spilt seed and marks
his visit with a fetid scat. Turning,
he passes where we sit, close-by the house,

trots down the drive to vanish in the lane.
Amazed, we freeze and watch this fox go by —
we’d seen signs that he visits in the night,
but not mid-afternoon in hot July.

CONVOLVULUS

When first green bramble berries start to show
and early hedgerow flowers start to fade,
up roadside grasses twining bindweed grows —
widdershins – towards bright sunlight’s haze.

Soon hedges down the lane wear heart-shaped leaves —
every where’s a smother of white flowers —
bell-like, large, they congregate like thieves
to steal the light, ambitious to climb higher.

Unlike favoured cousin, Morning Glory
bindweed in your garden is a pain —
a tiny bit of root repeats the story,
enveloping your beds with weed again.

To keep your borders always looking fine,
at your peril, ignore, this creeping vine.

THE BUTTERFLY BUSH

Self-sown, on waste ground, in old masonry,
it’s found a toehold on old factory sites,
populates the ruins of stately homes.
Once a cultivar, it slipped away
to set up home beside the railway tracks,
on abandoned buildings, sprouts from broken paths.
Buddleia can outgrow some native plants,
seeds germinate on dry and hostile ground;
its panicles of tiny lilac flowers
are where the bees and butterflies are found.
And, at a time with species in decline,
when campaigns urge Save Butterflies and Bees
our government has found time to decide
that buddleia is no more than a weed….

DEFRA (Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Has declared buddleia to be an “invasive alien species.”

REWILDING : WHITE STORKS

My Father talked of storks he saw
in Poland, when he was a child,
each village had its storks “next door”
as most of them weren’t in the wild —
Back then they said that, as a whole,
one in four storks World Wide’s a Pole!

I first saw storks in Portugal.
On chimney stacks and in tall trees
careless nests, built in a scrabble
of broken sticks, sway in the breeze
where nesting birds “clack” with their bills
to thank their mates for their fresh kills.

Yet, now to Sussex storks have come
and pairs are building nests at Knepp,
their breeding problems overcome
with Cotswold Wildlife’s best help… yet
in Wadebridge, Cornwall, more have hatched,
even Dagenham’s got a stork patch...

So, will the Knepp storks cross The Downs
to visit cousins up in Town?

25% of the Total Population of White Storks breed in Poland.
They are welcome in the countryside where they are believed
to bring good luck.
In England, White Storks were hunted to extinction in the 1400s.
Today, the White Stork is being reintroduced, repopulating several
areas in England.

VENEZUELA

APPLAUD and CRY

Across the internet and TV news
fresh views of surrounding devastation.
Cutting away, the camera zooms in
to close up shots of a very small boy,
dusty, pale crying — rescued from the rubble.
Lifted shoulder high by triumphant men,
he sobs for missing Mother, lost brother—
his life now set in an alien world.
And how this scene plays out time after time,
from natural disaster to war-torn city —
we cheer the rescue ...but weep tears for him.

ALL POEMS ON THIS WEBSITE ARE SUBJECT TO COPYRIGHT