Trickles – Week 52 #52weeksofnaturepoetry (Raising money for RSPB)

How many ages

has this little stream sought to carve its mark,

tirelessly trickling downhill,

working particle by particle

to outline its bed?

Giants grow beside it,

a hundred variations

of leaves, stems, flowers, dangling tendrils

catching every spare droplet –

yet they weren’t even saplings, or seeds, or spores

when the stream began its task.

Other flora grew in their place, and before that,

more still.

Generations have passed

watching the water lick on,

and the ground, impressed by its perseverance,

took shape from it,

drawing a steep, gaping mouth

with fall-filled yawns.

Now visitors congregate

to the fruit of the stream’s toil:

a quiet ravine splashed with every kind of green,

picturesque to them,

practical and well-stocked

to the fauna, great and small,

who keep it company.

This 52nd poem is the final part of a project I’ve been 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. The donation page will be left up until the end of November 2021 (if not longer). Thank you for your support!

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In the Sculpture’s Mouth – Week 51 #52weeksofnaturepoetry RSPB Fundraiser

Mouth agape, silent war cry.

Body hammered scrap metal,

dusty, coarse red

from the elements.

Hardly a place

you’d expect to find three plump feather-balls

chirping for their parents.

Yet, in the gap between those rusted fangs,

they huddle within their nest.

A blush of yellow and grey

flicks from the rooftops to the sculpture’s head,

tail wagging up and down,

dripping water caught on its plumage

(a tell of its quick visit to the neighbour’s fountain).

Eyeing people in the distance, it pauses:

just another feature of the motionless guard.

All clear, it returns to its young

and fills their empty crops

with plentiful spoils.

Little worry for nimble predators

happening upon its modest family,

for, as in previous years, the imposing figure

proves a mighty deterrent.

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.

I was inspired to write this poem by a letter I read in the RSPB’s Nature’s Home magazine that had been sent in by a member of the public. The letter and accompanying photos featured a family of grey wagtails nesting in the mouth of a scrap metal sculpture, going on to say that the sculpture’s owner had seen the birds nesting there the previous year too, and so never wants to sell it. Cool, right?

More To Moles – Week 50 #52weeksofnaturepoetry: RSPB Fundraiser

Underground shadows,

excavating with spade-like paws,

redistributing nutrients,

aerating, creating

vital drainage in otherwise compacted ground.

Above, we see marks of their passage –

mounds of well-turned earth,

from clearing their intricate tunnels.

Occasionally, they emerge,

noses appearing first

like eager bulbs shooting up debut leaves.

But tunnels don’t dig themselves;

back to work,

shifting between activity and sleep

every four hours.

Shy creatures, they disturb few.

Still, they are called out,

considered ‘pests’,

driven away.

Caught. Killed.

Bodies strung on fences to prove the count.

And all to protect land

reserved for nothing more

than human pastimes

and profit.

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!

A Plea to the Wizard’s Tree (or Fid Na Ndruad) – Week 49 #52weeksofnaturepoetry

Oh, Rowan! Fine, sturdy tree!

Won’t you grow beside our house

to repel wayward spirits wishing harm?

Mischievous fae; witches

threatening to curse family, crops

and land.

Your clusters of cream flowers

invoke days full of joy,

and each sour, scarlet fruit

wards against malevolence.

From the silvery grey of your bark

to your feather-like leaflets,

you could shield our grounds from unsavoury folk

without even trying.

In return, we’ll protect you

from woodcutters’ metallic bites,

mulch the ground by your roots,

restrict the harvesting of your berries

(which, you should be proud to hear,

 make wonderfully tart jam)

so each thrush, redstart, blackbird and waxwing

who visits won’t starve.

Dear fid na ndruad,

I don’t believe you acknowledge

how wonderful you are:

spoons turned from your fallen wood

keep milk from curdling,

a charm of bark in our pocket

eases rheumatic limbs,

and when we find our path unclear,

you’re the key that helps us divine.

So please, I know it’s a lot to ask,

but would you kindly indulge us

one last time?

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!

Conversation With A Flower – Week 39 #52weeksofnaturepoetry

Oh, purple, pouting flower

towering over me,

won’t you tell how you got your name?

Through tales of gifting socks and gloves

to heavy-pawed foxes

(thereby lessening the chance of them alerting prey).

Are they true?

These legends, these yarns?

Who can say, curious one?

I have flowered and perished

and flowered again

many times.

Any tales about my past

may contain slices of truth,

or none.

Surely you must know

of one that’s factual?

Come on, share.

Please.

Have you heard of dead men’s bells?

No?

An alternative term spoken in some parts,

spun from whispers

discussing my aptitude for raising the fallen

and souring the living.

You’re a wild thing, then?

Doing what you will

with any who trample your roots?

Nay, it’s simpler than that.

If a failing heart and high blood pressure

lay among a person’s troubles,

ingesting the right dosage

of my leafy makeup

can send the reaper scarpering from their door.

Nip too much, however,

and even the healthiest of souls

might find themselves snoozing

with the worms.

And other creatures?

What do they think of you?

Ask the carder bees.

Watch them kiss each tubular set of lips

and run off with pockets full of brilliant powder.

Listen as their buzzing wings proclaim

not all riches are jingling coins,

and I am a mine of treasures.

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.]

Residents of Dodnor Creek – #52weeksofnaturepoetry Week 31

‘Please mum, give me some more!’

Duckling demands, shadowing its parents

as they forage for snacks

around the old millpond’s

murky shallows.

Meanwhile, siblings catch some shut-eye

on a long-discarded traffic cone

half-buried in mud and algae;

a streak of neon orange

and reflector tape

distinguishing it from old branches.

Across the way, another family

swims into view.

Coots and their young, nipping

into willow scrub and reeds,

scouting for food of their own.

An unsuspecting moorhen paddles by,

concerned with its own needs –

until it receives a peck from Mrs Coot:

‘Maintain your distance from my chicks,

if you please, sir!’

she declares with her mighty

ARK-ARKing call,

sending it scarpering elsewhere

along the creek.

Positioned on a central reed bed,

two lengthy white necks look up

from their wicker-like nest

and single bundle

of grey, fluffy joy.

Trouble brewing?

Ah, another row between neighbours.

Best to leave them to it.

‘Come on, junior. Let’s visit

the youngest ducklings

by the pond’s fringe,’

they say, and swim off

on a family outing; breezy, soft clouds

protecting a touch of rain.

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.]

#52weeksofnaturepoetry Week 22 – Chattering

Some say

trees speak to each other,

whispering pasts and presents our kind cannot comprehend.

These tales were woven as folklore, myth

but

keen minds have been at work

to research, ponder, analyse.

Their findings? Remarkable things.

If a tree is starved, its neighbours sense its desperation

and pass along nutrients to sustain it.

Their network of doing so is a curious one – fungus, they employ.

A phone line

of fungus which latches on to roots

and connects them to others.

In return,

a small percentage of sugar food must be paid.

Typical service charge.

Warnings can be given, too.

Of drought, pests, disease.

With the time

these messages bring, the collective

can change its behaviour.

Each sapling, each grandparent,

altering, slightly, to protect themselves.

In China, a bright green flower –

picked often for its herbal properties –

grew tired of the picking.

Plucked at again and again.

So it bloomed duller, then duller still,

until it matched its surroundings.

Hidden, protected

from eager hands.

Aerial footage, sped up

enough for us to discern the goings on,

shows a forest’s movement.

How each tree sways, branches linking

then parting,

trunks leaning first this way, then that.

Not unlike brain activity,

synapses pulsing with signals,

leaves drifting between.

Watching this slow progression, I wonder

if Tolkien was on to something.

Maybe trees and other plants can talk, but,

like Entish,

the delivery of their words is not

for the impatient.

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, ‘traditional’ 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 19 – Revival

You’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a sculpture,

each groove and knot moulded by careful hands,

texturising bark and smoothing nodes.

A representation of life, but not life itself.

But the truth is, not so long ago,

it would have danced with the wind,

green baubles flapping freely while

its long arms waved to the birds

and swallowed the sun.

Oh, how vibrant and rich it must have been once, before they came and hacked and hacked

and hacked.

Why this brutality, this disregard for natural form?

To make it safe, perhaps? Lessen the chance of falling limbs

onto fences and fancy cars?

Bricked-in and sawn like that, I often wonder:

Can it survive?

Will it survive?

Or will I spot its tired spirit one day, lingering outside its trunk,

circling in the hope of reviving itself

before finally giving up and drifting away?

And yet, reaching from old wounds and summoned by the seasons,

tell-tale spindly shoots appear: the newest of new growth.

It lives! It lives still,

though little care has come its way.

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, ‘traditional’ 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 16 – Jelly Ears

Jelly-like ears cluster on trees,

livening up dying lower branches.

The latest fashion, you might think.

Beech, sycamore, ash – they all wear them,

but elder sports the most.

Legend has it

that for elder, the ears represent Judas’s tormented soul.

But perhaps the hardwood simply delights

in listening to the varied sounds of its woodland home

and so wished to collect more of them;

those reddish-brown kidney beans,

with their translucent undersides wrinkled into veins,

clinging to bark like folded ribbon.

Ruffle-tastic.

When the frosts arrive, they freeze solid,

becoming sugared sweeties in an elaborate window display.

Then, as they thaw, their cells jump into action

and off they go:

growing, growing, as if the pause button

had never been hit.

This poem is part of my #52weeksofnaturepoetry project to raise money for the RSPB . To find out more about the project and how to donate, please visit my Just Giving page here.

Sharing is also much appreciated, as I’m trying to raise as much awareness of our local wildlife as possible. The more people who appreciate nature, the more likely it can be successfully protected.

#52weeksofnaturepoetry Week 11 – Secret Societies

In our hardened grey habitat, it’s easy

to paint everything the same.

Unknowingly masking

the creeping green

and zesty feathers

shadowing over our shoulders.

Plugging our noses against

the rising scent of decaying leaves

gathered on kerbsides

and stray tufts of grass.

Our ears blocked to the coo of pigeons

strutting around our feet

as they wear their street-cool metallic hoods.

Yes, it’s become a mantra

that the urban world is one

in which nature would never

wish to enter.

Yet the beady eyes nestling

in overgrown bushes by driveways,

the scaled, vibrating wings

sheltering within garden sheds,

all the webbed feet

hopping into various paddling pools

(long since forgotten and swollen with rain)

quietly, quietly

whisper:

we’re here, we’re here, we’re here.

This poem is part of my #52weeksofnaturepoetry project to raise money for the RSPB . To find out more about the project and how to donate, please visit my Just Giving page here.

Sharing is also much appreciated, as I’m trying to raise as much awareness of our local wildlife as possible. The more people who appreciate nature, the more likely it can be successfully protected.

(Apologies if this one gets posted oddly, my Internet has been disrupted so I had to make do with posting this via my phone)