Freewheeling through icy downhill drizzle

Rivulets run left then right

A slow hill climb through banks of ramsons

to a ridgeway of hedges reclining to within an inch of their lives

Down again to brown water high and rushing

then up to sanctuary within the walls.

Sharp citrine cushions of Euphorbia

and Arisaema erecting canopies over grey freckled stems

A low carpet of green rises with fading chocolate hellebores and pinpoint periwinkle

Dark arms of jagged apples pucker lipstick buds in to life

And black capped jackdaws strutt and gather

bouncing ‘Tchack Tchack’

As a low fish pond meadow swells below

If sleep were to come here

I would turn my back

As the sun of tomorrow

Lies on it’s side and closes it’s eyes

To light shadow faces

Tracing sunken trunks and moss covered fissures

In this forest of the night.

Where the depths of the canopy drown decades of decayed wood

And we walk in the darkness, towards the light.

This forest of the night we must pass through

This surround of light

Drenched in darkness.

Sleep green in the forest

We’ll wake with the same sun

And take leave this evening

Wherever we’ve dreamed

With soft sinking steps

Friction froze slopes move to equilibrium

My shoes in litho-mineral liquid

I would happily sink in to it’s cold embrace

but I must select the stones

uniform and roundish, flat with an edge to grip

and throw down from the sloping tide peak

My fleeting contact

A rolling surge overtopped by a smooth constant rush of moon drawn peaks

Drawing clinker from the breathing beach

In hot luxury lie palatial plazas

And football pitch pools

Placing garden cut vistas

through the forest.

The forest of deer and martens

Now fenced in by traffic or death

Traffic that lives through the rain and the smell of freshly cut corn

Wet and dusty evaporating

in the sun like a grill iron

glowing with the wind.

Ruffling birches

take the rain away and sweet sounding Melun surprises

with high rise and low flow.

The wheat is still ripening

This July

While everlasting sweet peas still

spill down the railway embankment

The sun still warms

through breaks in the cloud

While my father waits

On a cold shelf

To be transformed

Taking some of this world with him

Power assisted doors enclose

And envelope musty sweet artichoke aromas.

Damp jurassic greens climb titanic stems

like trees, under glass

A slow prehistoric blanket

of mountaineering moss floods fibre haired stems

Ringed and ridged

To protect from giant tortoise teeth

Weak black tea

Brown and bronze

Stones rounded

Flood dry debris mounded

Flitted and perched by yellow wagtail

Fledgelings and wrens

It balances me

The one sided weight that carries me

A curvaceous case with waist contained

Taught with strings and horsehair

Pads and powder in secret pockets

and velvet black vibrations like memories held in amber

A black box of perfect proportion

Closed not opened

Held in

A disc of dawn from my eastern eye

I stand before

The grey front at dusk

On rarely seen plain ivy vein

Dark scattered steps of green weave down

To the sleeping screen of dark water.

Brambles scramble over ancient ditches

and the fox tracks under forgotten fences

wend dry dens under long dead elder,

leaning and cracking with the weight of others.

Who knows here?

Not the screeching parakeet fleet

Not the siren bumbling through crowded cars

nor the silent roar of the London bound.

The little oak river runs rapid beyond the bank of flint and earth

Shrouding in dusk,

Receding from versimilltude