POETRY

HARES

New born, the leveret hunkers down,
this shallow grassy form its only refuge.
From the field gate — one careless step away —
it faces lowering skies and April deluge.

Furred and mobile, leverets grow up fast —
once an evening visit from their mothers;
soon eating grasses, weaned in thirty days
for a secret life mostly under cover.

Out of hedgerow grass, as teams trot out,
a startled hare blunders across the pitch.
Frightened by the crowd, chased by unleashed dog,
zig-zags to safety, bounds the yawning ditch.

Elusive moon-gazers, meditators,
solitary envoys on the run;
they make shy pets — highly strung, evasive —
Cowper kept three hares, Boudica had one.

Seen from the train, in a distant pasture,
a lepus convocation set to scare :
these witches’ familiars and shape-shifters…
Was that a coven or some circled hares?

MAGPIES

I dream of strange devils with cloven hooves
and others galloping in hobnail boots —
I wake to heavy footsteps on my roof.

I creep to the window, expect some brute,
instead of a monster it’s two magpies
in search of mischief, not long from their roost.

Launching themselves into the air, they fly
but are beaten by the bird-feeder’s swing —
thwarted...yet they won’t give in, they’ll still try

to find devilry whilst on the wing —
chuckling their way to a neighbour’s tree.
Disappearing, they’re off to do their thing

but I’m left bleary-eyed after their spree…
You say “I love these birds” — I disagree!

Made up of tercets, this sonnet is in a terza rima rhyme scheme.

CHANGING SPRING

There is such yellow in the lane
that lifts and brightens grey March days :
the pussy willow is a haze
of lemon-pollened silky fur;
bright daffodils nod with the breeze
that dances hazel catkins now,
while carpets of wild celandines
fill up the verge where primrose shows.
And, in the gardens, jasmine’s flame
burns brighter than in winter’s scene,
competing now with breaking leaves
where, high above and all around,
this yellow spring turns slowly green.

The Rooks Have Returned - Alexei Savresov  (1830 - 1897)

ROOKS

Each evening they appear at dusk
in ones and twos —
return from distant foraging.
Flapping untidy wings in laboured flight,
they circle,
gathering as a cawing group,
heading for their roost in Hazelwood.

Today, nest building in the tallest trees
that screen the wood.
Feathers, flickering with a purple sheen,
birds stalk through the plough
gathering stems of autumn straw,
twigs snapped from skeleton hedge —
their cries lost to a bitter wind.

Toing and froing, this noisy congregation
battles swift gusts,
land unsteadily in topmost branches.
Slowly, under a cold March sun,
old architecture is refreshed,
new nests built —
airy cradles to rock this Springtime’s young.

A single rook is a crow; a group of crows are rooks…
(An old country saying).

BLACKTHORN

Our blackthorn has been wonderful this year,
each hedge I passed seemed blanketed in snow.
The trees, like white sails, billowed over lanes
and verges… and the celandines’ bright show.

A gusting wind sprang up to shake the hedge,
bending the trees to rock them to and fro,
releasing blossom in a blizzard fall,
surprising horse and rider just below.

As drifts of snow-white petals filled the lane
the parting clouds revealed a watery sun;
although the signs of Spring were in the air,
the cold wind warned that Winter’s not yet done…

Now, seasons on, the hedge bears blue-black sloes,
As bitter as that wind from long ago.

ELVERS

Riding spring tides, sucked into Severn’s mouth,
they’ve braved Atlantic storms to swarm upstream :
this mass of squirming grey translucency,
glass eels, whose every heartbeat can be seen.

Rare pike and wading herons eat their fill,
and, on ebb tides at night, lone fishermen
come out with lights, attract this shoal
close to the banks and dip-nets’ caging pens.

Spring’s river harvest time in bygone days
saw elver-eating contests at the pub;
sold cheaply by the pint to working men,
these baby eels were starving families’ grub.

Today, ‘though fewer make the nets, the catch,
a writhing, frothy mass, is ferried home
by van in plastic tanks and old tin baths
to sell, as special Easter treats, to gastronomes.