Little Might – Week 32 #52weeksofnaturepoetry (Raising money for the RSPB)

Wilted leaves.

Brown, crinkled things dangling

from a branch.

That’s all they are, right?

Wrong!

Perception only,

exactly what the transforming life inside

wishes

casual onlookers to see,

instead of its carefully placed chrysalis.

But today, this guise

will be shed;

next stage imminent.

Softening the hard casing, a scratch

becomes a slit,

with just enough room

to drag its reborn self

into the open.

Breaking free; possibly the greatest struggle

of its life.

A cape of folded wings,

long limbs, antennae, curled tongue –

all new, barely a hint

of prior form left –

easing from a space now several sizes

too small.

Vulnerable the entire time,

each wriggle

requiring a rest period

where anything might snatch

at its fragile state.

Yet the very act

of this mammoth task

activates internal hydraulics.

Fluid pumps into wing veins,

expanding them

into powerful, scaled beaters.

Then: off to flowers,

toes tasting each flavour.

Deciding what’s a feast,

and what’s foul.

Unaware of the tales its species inspires

each time a human stops to notice.

Yarns of good fortune, joy, fertility, love.

The birth of a new soul,

the last passage of one who is lost.

This poem is part of a project I’m doing to raise money for the RSPB, a UK wildlife conservation and protection charity. If you’d like to help, please share this poem to encourage others to take joy in nature, and if you have the time and means to donate, you can do so here. Let’s help keep our wildlife wild!

[Apologies for how these poems are formatted. I do write them in stanzas, but WordPress rarely decides to keep them, no matter how much I argue with it.]

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#52weeksofnaturepoetry Week 12 – Not So Grave

The stones are leaning, broken, face down. Grass hides the boundaries but also shelters little pockets of shoots. Snowdrops. Daffodils. Soon a clump of crocuses or two. Arthritic trees pop with new growth; tendrils sprouting straight from trunks, left to thrive and wild despite the careful manicuring of shrubs and hedges elsewhere on the plot. Buds collect on arms like dew, promising, teasing: soon, soon. Branches wave, collecting birdsong with the same enthusiasm as dry earth awaiting rain. The birds themselves are tiny, specks of brown-grey, black, yellow-green, and blue; mingling and chattering on, heedless of the slumbering residents grinning up at the daisies.

This poem is part of a project I’m doing to raise money for the RSPB, a UK wildlife conservation and protection charity. Being autistic, nature is often my only place of solace, and I want to do all I can to protect it. As I’m not very comfortable around other people, most of the standard ways of helping out (volunteering, sport-style fundraisers etc) were not a good fit for me, so I came up with #52weeksofnaturepoetry, where I have to post a nature poem here on this blog each week for an entire year without fail.

If you’d like to help, please share this poem to encourage others to take joy in nature, and if you have the time and means to donate, you can do so here. Let’s help keep our wildlife wild!

#52weeksofnaturepoetry Week 10 – Living Grave

So many times, I’ve walked past. Seeing but not seeing.

For this giant’s footprint, this decayed and blackened skeleton

has long scuttled from my attention. But now I                  pause.

Vague architecture

ripples into sense:

Steps morph into centuries-old roots basking on the soil’s surface,

the ankle-high wall surrounding a stump-table

melts into remains

of an even larger trunk, worn smooth by time’s fingers.

Five of me could stand inside and still not knock elbows.

I bet

it was Lord of Trees once,

before disease or the elements or man

finally beat it down.

And though the realisation

that I’m hovering within its bones strikes hard,

I don’t mourn for long.

How can I

when this humble grave teams with life?

Fungi, lichen, moss –

they decorate its bark like the echoes of new growth.

Climbers and creepers seek its grain, grasping

it like a helping hand, a boost of support

for their own roots.

And here I am, connected to it all,

part of the quiet bustle that takes place despite winter’s clutch.

This poem is part of my #52weeksofnaturepoetry project to raise funds for UK wildlife charity RSPB and to encourage an appreciation for nature. If you enjoyed it, please consider sharing it and/or donating to the RSPB via my Just Giving page here.

Help keep wildlife wild!

#52weeksofnaturepoetry Week 7 – Echoes of Wild

Their bodies were found in forests,

in fields, in rivers.

On roads, under windows, behind fireplaces,

in open water butts.

Their horrors were embroidered,

woes collected on their fur, feathers, skin:

Our nest sites vanished.

They bricked them up.

Metal demons in the fields

killed our chicks.

My kin and I were poisoned

by pellets put out for our prey.

We were hunters, keen eyes and talons always ready.

Yet we interfered with their ‘sport’ and became the hunted.

They cut off the pathways.

Forced us towards more dangerous routes.

They ordered a cull again, wished

to trim us down to size. Said we spread disease.

Bullets chased us through the trees.

Our feathers burst free as they struck.

Our mother was driven away by frenzied hounds,

leaving us to starve.

We had so few places to call home. So few.

We were once many. Now we are mere whispers,

morphing, slowly, into legend.

This poem is part of a project I’m doing to raise money for the RSPB, a UK wildlife conservation and protection charity. Being autistic, nature is often my only place of solace, and I want to do all I can to protect it. As I’m not very comfortable around other people, most of the standard ways of helping out (volunteering, sport-style fundraisers etc) were not a good fit for me, so I came up with #52weeksofnaturepoetry, where I have to post a nature poem here on this blog each week for an entire year without fail.

If you’d like to help, please share this poem to encourage others to take joy in nature, and if you have the time and means to donate, you can do so here. Let’s help keep our wildlife wild!

[Edit] Here’s an article about how the RSPB are trying to improve farming practices to help wildlife: https://www.rspb.org.uk/our-work/rspb-news/news/stories/hope-farm/

Bandages

I can fix this

I tell myself every time,

afraid that inaction will guilt me harder,

panicking because I’m sure I can do something – anything –

to help.

But my intentions never turn out how I imagine,

the end is always the end

and I do nothing to delay it.

Sometimes I speed it up.

I can never be sure,

and so as they drift away in my hands

I feel as cold

as if I’d stood still.

A chat with the ground

I was with the skull all evening,

smirking at its cold jokes.

Our breath came out in backwards hymns

as it spoke of what death is really like.

I said to it that I wanted to shake its hand

for giving me such relief.

It replied that

one day, when it worked up the energy,

it would reach its arms out of the earth

in daisies and let me pick them.

Commute

They line up at the cliff edge, eyes on the storm clouds ahead,

nervously opening the umbrellas they’ve just been handed by the young assistant

about to direct them.

He asks a few questions, answers of which are stolen away by the wind

as it crawls through their mouths and hair.

Then he takes out a combined watch, compass and barometer, counts down

and gives a short pip of his silver whistle.

As one, the first group steps off the cliff

and catches the draft down to the city below,

floating serenely as their suitcases dangle by their knees,

carrying everything they need for arrival.

Another pip sounds behind them, and

briefly they wonder

how many the assistant has to guide today.

 

Last glance

She leads him

To the mirror pool

Where she tells him to dip his hands and drink.

She doesn’t say when to stop,

And so he continues, draining the pool.

In his belly, the shards of the mirror form, and

He sees not the blood from the wound in his middle,

But the faces of his children as they play,

Oblivious, in the fields below.

Chrysalis

Their wings were broken, dark bodies

in constant motion

trying to escape the mesh.

No air, no wind.

Emerged one day to a wall, nothing more.

The sun shone, but they could never get to it.

Weather change

If the breeze could speak, I wonder if it would tell us where it’s come from.

Tell us about the butterflies that have surfed on it, or the parachuting spiders waiting to paint the trees with silk.

How many bodies it’s brought together,  channeling life from flower to flower,

catching dreams and sending them by sky post to Mary Poppins.

Would it tell us about the cut trees it’s seen, the hunters who have no hunger to warrant hunting, the water that was ice and the islands not made of rock or soil, but plastic?

Maybe it already is speaking and we just haven’t learnt how to listen.