Honey-suckle, dog-rose and scabious recline

with meadow-sweet, hare-bell, marjoram

Evoking deep, ancient Summers to entwine

With the sensual moment of the great I am!

Here in May, Stitch-wort, wild strawberry

Wood-sorrel, anemone, shone among colours

Of campion, crane’s bill, bluebell – memory

of man-made lanes and long human hours

But I brush past fox-glove and cow-parsley

As Bronze Age drovers did on this same lane

And as people should as far as time can see

And I, in husbandry of crops I can sustain

Edwin Muir says – this side of the Fall

Not Eden, but agriculture – town and farm

But now grown cancerous and just too tall

Silhouette of pale hubris bent on self-harm

Yes, Step back in concert. Uncover lost homes

In extensive woods and well-farmed fields

Where seasons pass in their metronome

And we follow, dependant on tribute and yield

Town and village will make and trade

By steps pragmatic as this verse’s feet

In sequence with heart beats as man-made

and natural forces resolve and meet

Where gravity brings water to ingenious hands

Where wind shoves sails over dividing seas

Wresting economies for people in durable lands

From dead hands of ecocide, mal-fire, monopolies…

I sing of Cloud Cuckoo land, or so it’s said

While truth is abstract – status and spending

But I prefer real things – living and dead

Love, pulse and breath with no cruel ending

***