The four fish

The four fish snagged on a birch twig
and that weighty expounder the priest,
the rim of the net resting against the shed
& the sun as sharp as a thimble
               dropping
behind grey veils of the hill. Dusk!
& my father is weary & happy
but hardly listening
just the occasional grunt
as he polishes
   prepares   & packs   repairs
and reviews split hooks & spooled line
     in the shadows of the veranda
               & the toolshed
     comes & goes
          in a meditation so practical
no-one can speak it in words,
     but it ends in "coffee".
And still as we play cards
          sit round the table joking
his spirit moves in the dusk
     his spirit moves back upstream
               to the troutpool.

Love is Metaphysical gravity

flit

The soaring buzzard with grey mirror underwings, -
the Bat-Signal surmounted
every megapol street and stone-cast lea in the ground-out basin;
gulls wicker
and a jackdaw hunches on a sloping roof.
The path pens heavy dour of a white shrub.

He has often witnessed those empty stairs and bannisters,
The stair-carpet with an indifferent stain,
above their heads a bulb without a shade, or socket without a bulb,
the entrance-hall marked with a big splodge of paper.

They are dead to us, (the corner children shout and the frilly borders nod and the office of fair trade confirms).
Dead to us;
long live the corn harvest and the Mahotella queens;
they are gone far away;
singing or dead maybe,
singing or dead.

on the move

Silver as palaces iced in the grass,
browan as the rown's young fruit,
turnpike silver-like oats at the glass,
brown as the silver swan's foot

and the mouths of the June-lily brown,
in spunlight diffusing the sky,
when pattering rainsnorts silver as down
and the chestnrt house's eye;

the pony's sad brown eye as he grafts
brown miles of Walcheren-cress,
the silver dog slinking between the shafts:
the cream of wedlock in a lane's green dress.

the evening walk

A couple of favourite plants on my evening walk through the Ind. Est. (Photos taken yesterday.)




First, a rather spectacular colony of hawkweeds (even more spectacular when the sun is high and the flowers are fully open). Judging from the winged petioles of the basal leaves, and the clasping stem-leaves, this should belong to the introduced Hieracium sect. Amplexicaulia, though Stace says this is "very scattered".




Rat's-tail Fescue (Vulpia myuros). Probably native, but always found in man-made environments - an increasing species. Typically, as here, with drooping inflorescences.




Finally out into the countryside. They've just bagged the silage.

[I didn't notice this until a week later, but just the other side of the path from the hawkweeds was a plant I'd never seen before, Pepper Saxifrage (Silaum silaus). Hardly where you'd expect it - but anyway the moral to botanists is, keep a close eye on your local scruffy Ind. Est.!]