I must admit to feeling disheartened in the run up to another COP, where the oil and gas companies seem to be seeing the talks as an opportunity to do business, rather than prioritise moving to cheaper and cleaner and more local alternatives. The powers that be sometimes seem especially powerful.
So here’s a tiny, smaller-than-David-vs-Goliath idea which is currently happening in my drive. Just in case any of you good readers feel similarly, and are looking for small but meaningful actions. There’s a lot of us who care, who want to leave the world in as good a state as we can. So, rather than despairing over what isn’t happening, here’s something that is. Mighty oaks from little acorns and all that…..
It all started a couple of weeks ago, when my husband came across one of our old neighbours digging tiny tree seedlings out of a council flowerbed. Unsuprisingly, he asked her what she was doing. She replied that a friend of hers had two acres she was trying to replant as woodland, and was looking for trees. Now, I express unease on a regular basis about the number of tree seed- and saplings I pull out of our garden. The squirrels are very keen on planting nuts, which germinate remarkably well for instance….. So, he mentioned it to me, and I got in touch with the lady with the two acres. I dug out all the readily available saplings, and began to collect them from other people. The first load of about 100 trees went to her, and to someone else who has twelve acres they’re rewilding.
I wondered if other people might have spare trees in their garden, so emailed my friends at Transition Woodbridge, who passed the message on. Trees are arriving most days, and another person has expressed a need for small native trees, especially ones suitable for growing in a hedge. Another friend also has a number of oaks springing up in her allotment. So we have more sources of trees, and more places where they can go. It’s always good when actions become collective, when people gather together and all do the little bit they can.
Now, who knows where this will go, but for now, I reckon we’ve easily been able to provide a new home for getting on for 200 infant trees. That’s not nothing. That is something. It’s food for insects and birds, it’s shelter, it’s improved soil fertility and water management, it’s less carbon and more oxygen. It’s one in the eye for despair, too.
So, here’s to taking the small actions we can. You never know where they might lead. In 100 years from now, those nine tiny oaks might be home to many creatures, having a profoundly positive impact on soil, air and water …. And carbon. Nearly all life on the planet is carbon based, after all.
The practice of wandering – often around the garden – contines to be a a helpful one for me, quieting and contemplative. The practice of standing still and looking, too. Quite a lot of apparent “nothing” seems to be fertile ground, after all. Something catches my attention, as if it is saying: ‘look, here is something, a marvel, a meaning, a glimpse of beauty’. I am coming to think they are happening all the time, and what makes the difference is my openness to seeing, hearing and knowing them.
And so, when the sun broke through after the rain, I went outside, and sat on my coat, and looked. Some distance across the lawn, I saw a bright red light, flashing, and, curious, saw a drop of rain acting as a prism. I watched it for as long as the angle of light made it shine with colour. It called to mind two ancient stories – the burning bush, and the flood – from the Hebrew Scriptures. How the world is full of epiphanies. And again, I was in awe of the way the natural world – of earth and fire, water and air – invites us to listen, to pay attention, to wonder.
A solitary shining drop
Just now, I saw the sun catching a raindrop as it rolled so slowly down a sedum stem, fleshy and green.
It shone through red, rich, neon and ruby, flashing as the stem swayed in the breeze, taking the drop through that one ray of light, back and forth.
Then it suddenly changed to the dazzling blue of cobalt and lapis lazuli – oh, heavenly blue. Heavenly blue.
Just now, for a moment, this treasure made of light and rain, this solitary shining drop becomes a tiny shard of promise, a slim fragment of the arc that holds the sun and the rain.
It all speaks. All speaks. In the mind’s quiet, and in a flash of brilliance that turns your head. A gentle whisper and a burning bush, both. A drop and a rainbow. The world shines with meaning, murmuring, as the green earth is drenched by sun and rain.
Last Friday, during storm Babet, Suffolk experienced some of the most severe flooding in England. It was good to be able to stay home and keep in touch with friends, making sure they were safe. Many people have lost their homes, their businesses and their posessions. Tales of help and rescue are still emerging. Places that have not flooded in living memory have been badly effected. We are used to threats from the sea in this part of the world, but think of ourselves as living in a dry place, unused to severe storms. The climate is changing, and it is unsettling.
As I’m writing this, the next storm is about to arrive, with a weather warning for wind beginning this evening. The mild, even warm, air holds so much moisture, the trees are still in leaf, the roots in soft soil. This morning I hurried to pot up a whole load of tree seedlings for a friend of a friend who is planting a small wood nearby, and I marvelled at how easily they slid out of the earth.
This strangely perturbed and perturbing season of weather is full of beauty, plants and flowers still growing vigorously on the first day of November. The air is full of insects and birdsong. Frogs are hopping whenever I disturb the plants in the garden. As I sat in a patch of warmth I remembered some words of Robin Wall Kimmerer which I love, from a book I treasure:
“Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.” ― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
And as I began to write, that idea seemed particularly rich and right for the moment, and for always. What gifts we receive. I hope we can return such prodigal generosity, and care for the Earth. We do need the Earth to continue to care for us.
After the storm, October ‘23
There is a low sun slanting gold across all this humming green, all this hidden life whispering through each bending blade, and the birds sing loud after the silence of the storm, as loud and full as spring.
And the sun warms my skin after the floods and the rain and the rising dark waters, and my skin is soothed and comforted even as my mind is troubled.
What will become of us, what will become of us all, as the air heavies again with water, burdened, and that water, fallen, heavies, burdened, with brown earth, for each year brings more strangeness.
And yet, even so, the light drips with gold, shining through translucent wings, insects swaying in those wailful choirs, in many tiny flocks, rising and falling in the gusting warmth, more and more each year.
It feels so small, this heart-response to so much perplexity. And small it is.
And yet it is something to marvel at the beauty that is still offered, daily, to say yes, and thank you, for the green overflowing of all this life, and to tend within my reach. To receive, to love, to speak, to tell you even of these rain-drenched dripping flowers – look, heavy and ripe and bowing – and dare to hope that in some deep and barely discernible way this care, this love, this joining of eyes upon beauty, is the softest whisper, almost beyond hearing, of mending and healing and knitting together, stitched through with golden, endless light.
This poem also owes a debt to John Keats, and his incomparable Ode to Autumn.
As we come to the end of the Season of Creation, I offer a harvest of seeds.
I love the way seeds spread in the garden, finding new nooks and crannies to settle, new places where plants will grow and in their turn offer flowers to the insects, seeds to the wind and the birds.
As I was watching fluffy seedheads catch the breeze a few weeks ago, I felt my attention catch on the seeds. I felt that insistent “look!” which comes sometimes, and alerts me to some depth, some beauty, some meaning. It’s always worth attending to. And this time I saw the reckless generosity, the persistence of seeds, unfolding to me a truth about creation’s blythe insistence on hope. Each offering of seeds represents so many second chances, fresh starts, try agains. And the word forgiveness came to mind – as if the seeds were offering a chance of Spring despite, in the face of, the ways we continue to undermine and deplete the natural world. The seeds a sign of forgiveness, a chance to try again, an ever repeating offer of new life.
Some of you who have been good enough to follow this blog for a while may remember that I return often to the themes of the parables – the stories Jesus told – especially the ones that speak of the natural world. I love the way Jesus quotes the psalms to explain this mysterious teaching method – “I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world.” (Matthew 13:35) The Hebrew Scriptures tell of a vibrant world saturated with the glory of God, of living things being animated, and full of wisdom, if we will but pay attention. I hope to write more about that another time, but for now, I’ll return to seeds. If you’d like to read more about the parables and the seeds on this blog, you can look here and here to begin with.
The poem I’m sharing with you today is full of touches from the Gospels, and another day, if I can, I might unpack them for any of you who are interested. I felt the call to “look” was an invitation into all sorts of deep truths……But I hope the piece stands on its own, open to all who look with wonder.
But for now, below, the poem. It’s been one of those pieces that has revealed its meaning to me in the process of writing, that has felt like a discovery or an uncovering. I wanted to share it with you today, this last day of the Season of Creation. I hope I haven’t hurried it along too much – it’s been taking its time. I hope it is ready. We’ll see!
The grace of seeds.
Seeds are blowing in the breeze, gentle, white and light. Fairies, I used to call them as a child, back when the world was full of seeds, and butterflies, and glimmers of enchantment.
I breathe slowly and long into all this ripening. All this, all, glows with a deeper life – light and colour under the skin, shining with a song of greening and ripening.
Each seedhead releasing a kind of forgiveness that falls with the seed, falls to the earth bearing new beginnings, seventy times seven. Life wills to live, despite all we have done. Life uncoils again, and again. I am humble before it. Before the caterpillars on the toadflax, the frog stirring beneath the strawberries.
The world is indeed full of grace. We do not deserve these chances, again, and again, and again. And yet, deserving is not the point. Seeds fall, it is the very nature of things, and blow on the breeze. Each one offering multitudes. It is the way of seeds.
Might this grace, one day, even today, catch us in its loving web as the trumpets of bindweed blaze out a song of liberation, and the blackbirds tumble fearlessly, hungrily, in the hedge’s ripeness?
For the seeds float still, and the air is still full of enchantment. Life whispers, it calls us, it sings to us. Does it know we will turn towards it, at last, wooed and wonderstruck, and learn we belong, have belonged all along? We might, we may, we can. Those dry seeds show us how.
All the pictures are from the garden – and the narrow strip outside the wall by the road, where I’ve been sprinkling seeds for years.
I shared a poem with you last week – What the space holds. Writing that poem reminded me of the extraordinary Matisse cut-outs, imagining the negative spaces left when his scissors had finished thier task. I realised that I’d never shared with you a poem I wrote about those works…..
Tate Modern in London had a very beautiful exhibition some years ago, in 2014, of these late and astonishing cut-outs. I was deeply moved by what we saw and experienced. You can still buy the catalogue from The Tate – and other places too – if you’re interested. As ever, as a book that accompanies a major exhibition, it is a revealing and insightful exploration of the work.
A thing that struck me was the contrast between the photos of the frail but engrossed artist, towards the end of his life, and the vibrant, joyful celebration of life itself that the cut-outs embodied. The vitatlity of the art he created sang from the walls. Finding it hard to make art in the ways he had before, he developed this extraordinary technique to transform his relatively confined spaces into a paradise of form and colour.
I felt the deep wisdom of this response, this openness to beauty, to nature, to life as a whole. It seemed to offer a brightness that could illuminate our days.
Henri Matisse working on paper cut out. Undated photo. Getty images
Matisse Cut-Outs
The rooms are thick and warm with people looking, in reverence. There is a hush as we move like pilgrims through doorways and spaces full of quiet light.
There are photographs of you, in bed, or tucked in a chair, old and crumpled. Yet, in your outstretched hand is that long stick, tipped with charcoal, drawing, drawing, or a curling pile of paper at your feet, unravelling from those black scissors.
When the outside became unreachable you turned your rooms into a garden, with swallows dancing on the walls, and fig leaves, and pomegranates, mermaids and stars. You are covering your walls with bright cut-outs that sway in the warm breeze, lavender and myrtle, while you breathe deep.
This is what you did while pain nagged close, while death grew closer. You made the beauty you could make. You made joy visible. You did not stop – in the shadow of so much destruction, so much war-grief – you kept the charcoal and the scissors moving, an Eden at your ending.
I thought again about this exhibition a few weeks ago when I went to the Lighroom at King’s Cross with my daughter to see David Hockney’s Bigger and Closer (not smaller and further away). I loved the way the projections immersed you in the work, especially the Spring pieces he’s been developing using an i-Pad. You felt the power and beauty of the trees bursing into life, the brightness of the green, the froth of the cow-parsley. I bought a book as a souvenir, Spring Cannot be Cancelled, which I’m currently reading. It’s particularly good at capturing the mood of lockdown in his Normandy studio, and the intensity of the observations of the arrival of spring that time of isolation and deep uncertainty generated.
I was wondering whether to couple these two art events together, I do hope Hockney has many more prolific years ahead to enrich us all. I do not mean to suggest that he is an artist at the end of his life. But it seems to me there is something in common between these two artists in the intensity, freedom and joy of their later work. There is a real clear-sightedness and poignancy in the appreciation of beauty, and an urgency too. There is a deep embodied wisdom and wonder which pours through to the viewer.
Gradually, we’ve been reducing the size of the unmown places in the grass. It’s been growing so fast this year, and the flowers have had a second and a third go. The sun and the rain have kept everything flourishing. There are small frogs and grasshoppers, and many bees still. It’s worth going very slowly, giving everyone a chance to hop out of the way, and leaving places of refuge. Little by little….
I wish I’d taken a picture of this patch above in the week before it was cut, when a round shape appeared flattening the stems. We were pretty sure it was the muntjac who is a regular visit to the garden – earlier this year, there was a youngster too. You can read more about the deer in the garden here and here. She is a joy. I do worry about her crossing the road between the woods and the garden, about the speeding cars – but the only time I have ever seen her trotting along the road, everyone stopped and waited for her to be safe. Kind drivers!
As I sat by her space I imagined her presence. I felt the hum of the cars through the ground. And I thought of all the places where the creatures who used to make a home no longer do – all the absences. I felt the loss, even as I felt the beauty and abundance of this late flowering meadow. And so this poem emerged, in fits and starts. It’s taken its time, has a basenote of loss, and I hope it carries the gentle tenderness of the deer, and the many creatures I feel kin to even in this one garden.
What the space holds
There is a space in the long grass, a flattened disc of green stems, while all around late flowers nod. A curved bowl, waiting, rimmed with golden light.
Low down, face close to grass, I hear the hiss of breeze through stems, the buzz of bees, crickets, even, perhaps, butterfly wings. But there is no trace of whoever comes here, night after night, and circles, and settles to sleep. Too sweet a hay-smell for fox or badger, too big for cat.
I open my mind’s eye to the night, quiet, and across my heart a dark shape with long, delicate legs steps gently, picks her way through the black shimmer of stems and fills this space with a shadow – a shadow whose heart beats and ears twitch. I see a dream-deer, breathing, her brown sides rising and falling as the space fills with living warmth, with the softness of deer, with the gentleness of one who comes by night.
And as I dream, as I treasure the absent deer, I think of all the empty spaces and places, holding now only memory, fading, or worse, nothing. I think of the absences that there have been and that are yet to come.
Patterns cut out of sky where flocks of birds, tumbles of bees and butterflies are not, but once were. The rivers where there were fish, who are not. Places where the beavers and the big cats and the red squirrels are not, and their spaces cradle nothing, empty and mourning, Earth’s arms aching.
This soft round space that has become a bowl of dreams does not know if the sweet deer will return tonight, as car sound rumbles through the earth.
This bowl in the grass ringing with her absence, with the absence of all creatures who are not here, but who once were, as I run my finger around the rim, and feel the tremor of loss upon me, and through me. May she be safe. May she and all creatures be safe.
The final lines of blessing draw on the Buddhist practice of metta, or lovingkindness, meditation, which I have found deeply helpful and incorporate into my prayer and contemplation regularly.
When I was writing about the spaces where creatures are not, I remembered a wonderful Matisse exhibition we went to of his cutouts, done in his final months and filling his rooms with birds and flowers. I imagined the pieces of paper uncuring from his scissors and falling to the ground. I wondered if what we would be left with would be these negative spaces, with the birds and flowers no more, or if we would find our hearts opened to care for those we share this beautiful green world with.
Once again, I am astonished, delighted and honoured to find something I wrote has made its way in the world, and is keeping the most excellent company with Diana Butler Bass as she shares from the last day of the Wild Goose Festival in The Cottage.
Please do take the time to read her reflections, and those she has gathered. It is a rich feast, with much to refelect on. The theme of Sower and Soil seems more relevant than ever as our soils become depleted on many levels. I am very struck by Cathleen Falsani’s reflections on the parable of the Sower from Matthew’s Gospel, which really resonate with me.
The parable is one I’ve returned to again and again, it seems to carry richer and different meanings whenever I encounter it. Here are some links to posts on the subject, in case you’d like to follow today’s readings.
Welcome back to the blog! Thank you for joining me here in the garden again.
One of the great joys of summer evenings is going outside to look at what’s happening in the warm, long twilights. In particular, I love to look for bats as they tumble and swoop over the long grass, and above the shrubs. Last year, we had a bat recorder in the garden, part of Transition Woodbridge’s wildlife corridors project. It’s fascinating to find out what treasures we have, and to work together to try and encourage more. There was an evening event with feedback, and you can find out a bit more about it here, following the links. I was sad to have missed it, as we were away. But I know there are bats here.
The garden at night is a very different place from in the day, quite mysterious. I’ve been thinking about the many creatures who come to or live in the garden who I don’t know and can’t name. I’m learning all the time, but the more you find out, the more you realise how much you don’t know. I’m learning too not to mind the mystery, to find out what I can but to just enjoy the beauty and variety of creatures we get to see, and hear. To notice the detail and the behaviour of creatures that may in time help me to find out what they are, but now the noticing is enough, and a real source of delight. We know the muntjak and the fox, and a hedgehog from time to time, are there at night, we hear an owl and know there are mice, and probably voles, but the unknown creatures bring something special to the experience of being in the garden too, Not rushing to id everything, but instead being open to observe with awe, is something I’m coming to love. You don’t need to know what things are called to appreciate them. You can also do your own naming!
So this theme, of unknown and unnamed things, begins to unfold in this poem. I think there might be a few more pieces exploring this way of seeing too.
I don’t have the tech for night-time photography, so the words will have to do.
Unknown June twilight 10 o’clock
We went outside to look for bats, up against the navy and turquoise sky, up among the slick sycamore leaves, up above the long grass where pale moths flutter.
We waited in the thickening dark, quieting, and then saw a black shape twisting and swooping amongst the other night-flyers – a heavy beetle lumbering, ghost-moths, silver gnats.
In the day, all can seem sweetness and light. The smell of roses and lilies hanging in the soft air. Our own familiar world, we can think.
But now, darkness reaches closer than our outstretched fingertips. The bat flies overhead, joined by another, and another, and we hear sounds too down in the long grass down in the deep cover of the borders. A rustling and a moving that grows louder as the space is transfigured by darkness, strange creatures blooming in the imagination, unknown and unnamed.
As looking up again, I see the gathering stars sometimes obscured by stretched and fluttering wings. There is so much unknown to me, so many names have never been on my lips. The quietness of unknowing is upon me, even as
I seek to learn. And I find I am discovering, mainly, what it is to live in wonder, to walk slowly, and in awe.
Last month we took a few days to visit Norfolk, staying by the Wash. UK viewers of Winter Watch and others may have seen some awe-inspiring film of one of the UK’s greatest wildlife events – sometimes called the Snettisham Spectacular. Maybe you’ve been lucky enough to see it for yourself. We decided we’d go and try and catch this sight, when a very high tide drives the birds off the mix of saltmarsh and water, into the air in huge flocks, and down into lagoons cared for by the RSPB. Their website (linked above) will help you get a taste of what its like, as well as some information about when these high tides happen.
Of course, there are never any guarantees with nature, but we got up very early and went to Snettisham in the dark, on a cold February morning, full of anticipation. I’d decided on flasks of coffee – which turned out to be an excellent idea! It was the most moving experience, deeply awe-inspiring, to see a landscape so full of life, and the wildness behaving freely as it should. I am sure that there have been times when there were more birds, and more wild, here, but it was nonetheless a glimpse of a more beautiful world, the world closer to how it should and can be.
You may also be aware that this precious landscape is vulnerable, and a new development could have a huge impact. If you want to find out more about that, you could begin here.
I wanted to try and capture the beauty of what we saw, and also the depth of experience that aroused in us and the others perhaps who were gathered there, and so this poem recounts the journey through the dark, and into the dawn-light of this beautiful sight.
Out in the Wash-marsh, the dark-before-dawn, we walked uncertainly, deeper in, listening warily for water sounds, mud sounds, as we heard, out on our right, the loudness of bird and tide. Restless, growing, imminent.
The path seemed so long in the dark, unknowing and unseeing as we were. On and on until at last we came out of hedge-shadows and reed rustles, out on the open bank of shingle, with a chill wind blowing, with the dark softening into the grey of mist and ice-fret, as out of the greyness emerged a gathering crowd, moving, looking, watching that density of black birds emerging too, out there on the mudbanks and sandbanks, crowding as the water was rising, All prickling with anticipation, all readying for flight.
Through a lens you could see the black backs of oystercatchers, tens of thousands, all facing one way, bright beaks aligned like many compasses.
And further out, paler knots, rippling over the shrinking land, their voices sounding together as water lapped and lapped ever deeper, full of fish washed in on this rapid tide, followed by the hungry seals, heads up, and hunting.
The bird noise grows, and the waders begin their great lift, A few at first, tip toed, up and down like dancers performing the perfect jete. Then, as waves pour over their islands and there is no room for all these birds,
They lift and stay lifted, from the edges, like a great cloth, swirling now above fast running water rilled with small waves.
And then the oystercatchers begin to pour like dark smoke, like sentient smoke, as one, all to the right, pour down into the lagoons behind us.
While the knots, catching the rising light, rise too, turning pale now, loud with cries and loud too with wings, like a great crowd running joyously, like a shining cloud swirling in the wind but with mind, with being, with will, a great pale creature rustling and winding through the air over us, close and low, and then down in a whispering snake’s head behind.
And again, and again, rise up more swirls of birds, faster and wider by the tens of thousands, of wings all together, birds turning together, a miracle of unity,
As wings beat like hurried feet as more people rush to look up, and the waves take more and more ground from under us all.
And I cannot tell you what joy, what exultation – And I write from longing to tell you what joy, what exultation, we humans, standing, feel in this wide and wild abundance, this wild and wide abandon. This deep unity, this wide-wild-eyed seeing into the communion of things.
As a sudden sound is added even to all this loud crescendo, like thunder, like jets,
The rise and beating of great wings – pink footed geese beyond number, beyond measure,
filling the sky with clouds of moving birds, spinning fast now into great skeins that wind over the deep distance, loud and louder bright on the dawn,
Bright with the wonder of wings lifting, Bright in this new, steady, giddying light. A light that washes through us all A light that holds us all As dawn breaks us wide open.
I hope this gives you a glimpse of how beautiful a sight it was, and how transformative.
Yesterday evening I had the great privilege of reading this poem to open a series of talks organised by the Woodbridge Climate Action Centre. Local friends, tickets are free, and are going fast. The series is called Regenerating Living Landscapes, Working with Nature.
It is possible that a recording of last night’s event may become available. If it does, I’ll make sure there’s a link to it here.
19th May Note: As you can see from the list above, tonight is the last talk in the series. Once again I’m delighted to have been asked to read something, and the poem I’m going to read is A Good Place, which is also on this blog. As usual, click through to read it.
Hello again! Thank you so much for joining me here. I’ve been taking a break from blogging, if not from writing, for a few winter months. But as the days are lengthening and the sap is rising I’m emerging from winter hibernation by the fire.
Yesterday, for #International Women’s Day, I joined some of the wonderful women and men who make our small town such a special place. We’d been invited by Counsellor Caroline Page, who organised the very special gathering despite seriously failing health. There was cake and poetry, an old wind-up gramaphone, and Suffragette colours – a celebration of women who had lived in the town in years gone by as well as those we know and love today. It was full of life and joy and friendship. Many people shared, and I hope to be able to put a link up in time to more details about the poems and stories that we read and heard together.
That morning, I’d been watching the pigeons in the trees in front of our house – a remnant of an ancient hedgerow we’re gradually restoring – and took inspiration from their eagerness and their clatter. So although this is not a poem about women, it’s a poem about life, for all of us I hope, and the awaking of spring. It was my contribution to the feast.
I’m sharing it as part of my inclination to awaken and to clatter, to be hungry for spring and for life. I hope you enjoy it.
Pigeons in the blossom – Early March
Now that the cherry plum is blossoming – hedgerows white and frothy, flowers pale, bark dark –
pigeons come through the grey sky, clattering as they land opposite my window, their collars brighter than the blossom where they perch and peck.
Sometimes one, often more – armfuls – they balance across the scrubby tree like vintage decorations, nodding their blushed heads hungrily, pecking so many buds.
The top of the tree is almost stripped bare – no fruit high up then, no precarious balancing on shaky ladders in the summer to come.
Lower, thinner, branches are tested again and again by fat feasting pigeons, hungry for rich bitterness.
I feel inclined to join them, to taste that blossom too. I know the hunger for spring, bone-cold and weary as I am. And I am coming to see their wisdom as I too feel the urge to awaken and to clatter, to feast on life with its bright blossom, its green buds, again and again.
Pigeons seem to be a bit of a theme. Not the most popular bird, I know, but I do enjoy watching them. I do hope to be an equal opportunities appreciator of nature, and to celebrate all the creatures who share this patch of garden wild.
Here’s a few more poems, if you’d like to read on.
Andrea Skevington 