Monday – Late Spring

a further gift
(lockdown continues, as does the good weather).

The moon slides into darkness, meteors shower.
I settle into stillness, slowing down to the speed of sound.
Able to hear and see the world around, able to notice the colours of a fishes eyelids.
The still bare branches of the Ash trees clack gently against each other, wood on wood in the wind.
Their hearts wrapped in Ivy they cling to life in the face of dieback.
Will they live to see another summer?
They are still beautiful in their nakedness, against the brilliant blue sky.
There’s not a trace of cloud but the heat of the sun is whipped away by the harsh easterly wind.
A pair of crows, black as night, fly overhead.
Cry’s of seagulls, wood pigeon.
A bark of a dog.
A pale blue butterfly flutters and a dandelion scatterseed, carried on its wispy parachute, drifts by on the scent of the lilac.
Time passes more slowly now.
A bug wanders along my arm.
I am being taken back by the Earth.
I turn onto my belly and come eye to eye with the heart of a daisy, blazing in all its glorious yellowness.
I let myself drop into the undergrowth and drink in the smell of the grass.
I weep.
The world needs more poets, said the sign as I walked across the bridge.
Is that true, could I be one?

BBC Radio 4 Late Spring Audio Diary. Closed Country with Brett Westwood

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000hpdg

BBC Radio 4 – Open country changing seasons February/March Northern Ireland – Lambs, Salmon and Swans
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000hvt2