ONE JOB

WIND FARM

Photo: Penny Hill Wind Farm from Wickersley Gorse, South Yorkshire, taken by the author

THE LAST EARTHWORM

Inspired by reports in the UK press showing the massive decline in earthworms is due to over-cultivation, toxic pesticides, herbicides, nitrates, phosphates and insecticides, plus anti-wildlife government policy is contributing to songbird decline. Yet still ignorance insists on scapegoating other birds like magpies and sparrowhawks for natural predation as if they're the culprits!

LIVING THE DREAM

Photo by Porapak Apichodilok from Pexels

Turned on the morning news

And overnight

Children

Have only gone and

Let all the animals out of their traps and cages

Inspired gangs to throw their knives into the fire

Sown woodlands to heal frack crack and landfill

No-one can pick a side now for standing as one.

Threatened ones dance in diversity out of danger

Cures and care are now funded by giving a damn

Trolls set up helplines for those they have bullied and beaten

Peace reigns with volume and vilify put on mute

Foodbanks just folk tunes hummed by long remembrance

Plastic just melting as healthy as foam on the seas

Then we

Woke up.

To ourselves.

Didn’t we?

WE BE CREATION'S CRYING

Bonded
To this body of birds
Wheeling in freeform flock

Rooted
Radical in earthball
Tendrils tucked
Through trackless undergrowth

Voice of the heartstop hare
From her barren form,
Whisper and whicker,
Melt and bloat

Ductile seductive
Plastic at the seabird's throat,
Barnacles losing purchase
On the toxic rock

We be creation's crying
Syrinx singing
Solidarity
With rhythmic sobs
Please cope

Struggling to shine afresh
The sun slinks up,
Wandering west
To wash the waste
Pale gold
Wanhope.

HERE BE NO DRAGONS

Here be no dragons

Though stiffened necks nod

Over greenbelt and wildwood

No breathing integrity 

Of flame and tongue

Here be duplicity

Wolfing up landscape

Flogged to the fattest

Fracking our green

Blindfold off the cliff

St George with his breastplate gone

Bare to the drill

SITTING ON THE FENCE

It would be sunny sitting on the fence.
There you can swing your heels above the mess and mud.
From there you can see the filaments parting inside split hairs.

There, you are rocked to sleep by the tip and swing
Of the scales nodding to right and left extremes.

But these times are storm and hail, dismay
Like drumming, urgent rain.

Time to get off the fence,
Nail the freak flag to the mast,
Let myself down from the silent tower
By a skein of my own hair.

Nothing was built or bettered by folded arms.

Stepping from the fence's shadow

I stagger, but find myself standing.

So *deep breath*

I stand with bee.
I stand with badger.
I stand with fox.
I stand with dolphin.
I stand with kittiwake.
I stand with forest.
I stand with underdog.
I stand with sustainable.
I stand with outsider.
I stand with difference.
I stand with diversity.
I stand with colour.
I stand with courtesy.
I stand with humour.
I stand with gentle.
I stand with wind.
I stand with ocean.
I stand with cyclist.
I stand with walker.
I stand with introvert.
I stand with peacemaker.
I stand with refugee.
I stand with misfit.
I stand with spiritual.
I stand with science.
I stand with vulnerable.
I stand with other.
I stand with broken.
I stand with compassion.
I stand with no label.
I stand with love

large enough

not to have to prove itself

too

tough.