24/05/2018

Future Hedgerows



Life is now charging down lanes in a personal train
Flanked by ancient monuments where plenty happened pre-parish life  
Oblivious to boundaries huddle    
The secret senate of birds still alive with sex buzz and industrial vigor
Life now throwing fumes in rash assault 
The in between places insecure
Birds dart at my wheels in protest
Ripples of the things race the windshield
Swerving hysterics wave us on down black knife tar

Such fanfare flurry within the bank awakens a Self That Soars
Fly by Hornbeam, Holly, Holm Oak and Hawthorn, race past the H’s
Hazel replaced in the dictionary by futile acts of immortality
Red Backed Shrike a mere mortal that once forgotten can’t be googled
Start with the art word sounds that sing Starling, Wren, Song Thrush
Now the ideas we combine meet around wires grip
Soon a Nut Hatch will be in the palm of a child as they gaze at the embers of another rainbow ended
Pressing at buttons whilst knowing little
The nameless animals have turned it up to compete with the aching birth pangs of the city
They shout a shrill timorous song behind the tweeting of pop sensation X

Now that the butterfly moves too slow for the fast lane the whimsical lunges of the Romantics fade
We need a new urban doggerel that still shivers at words like sunlight, leaves and dew
That sculpts in clutched pirouette with all that is natural and true
Lyrics that dance like crazy with the pouring wonder of this world within worlds
We don’t need to be the climatic pivot of creation only join in
Somehow content in the vast anonymity of slow time

I want to see hedges on sky scrapers
Let us redream the better rows of our ancestors
Redeem rootless prodigal landscapes all the way up
Oh, to bump into a Linnet or two on the way to a conference on the 15th floor
Those grass-green heroes of older poems could become associate members
Off to a problem-solving meeting met by the chirp whistle of a new day
A bead sprinkle of light animated by bounteous rain drops
Lolling off leaves down glass windowed offices
Everything the right PH, might make us kinder
Like clean air to lungs, might make us bright
For the cartwheeling star that we call Sun
A quickening light, shines beyond this Tender country