Country Sonata

The mushroom steeple bell

balls its fist

rages twice

throws larks in flight

sings brother brother

to the distant sea

Men with orange necks

suck grass

beat the earth

in time with

the inchworm

lambing

the Seaford train

Light and air -

this mountain of may flowers

come friend

take nature’s pulse

dance a bee-wing waltz

drop glad to caper

at the copse

trudge dark to spring with me

two wasps against

the lazy sun

Down among the men

they love a barefoot girl

a piglet flower

holding the moon sideways

her dance is swift magic

her rhythm 

the pendulum of daffodils

of hot pricks

Ask the ploughman for his song

he’ll sing of her

in his grave he will hear

a tambourine.

Shovelfuls of cemetery

shake off a blade

the ancient gate

rises on a rusted hinge

thanks the lost dog

the historian

the odd picnicker

The gravestones low at night

wind songs settle

on a reef of bones

a soul held voiceless

in a tree root

her pickle heart beating still

listens closer than

the living

Spring clover

borage floated in my wine

the chalk pit passes

a station approaches

with its own sad songs.