Ploughing the Lea - by
There’s as mony turns to the plooman’s craft
/ As jags on a common thistle;
/ There’s fower lang seasons ‘tween field and laft,
/ Wi’…
farming
A Memory of Death - by
Nineteen fifty six was a momentous year,
/ The year of Suez…
Before Action - by
Over the down the road goes winding,
/ A ribbon of white in the corn –
/ The green,…
from vii. flock master - by
Three weeks: one field / a deluge / of births and deaths.
December Day - by
I ask no lovelier thing
/ Than this December silver:
/ See how the light flakes off the new-turned plough
/ Under the slow great swing
/ Of…
Trees - by
You hold the sapling straight, backfill,
/ heel it in. A rainbow
/ pours from the watering can.
Lazybones - by
In Chile now, cherries are dancing,
/ the dark, secretive girls are singing,
/ and in guitars, water is shining.
/
/ The sun is touching every…
Grains of Rice - by
They leave rice fields to travel far and wide:
/ who doesn’t count on them for sustenance?
/ Doffing their golden coats, they bask…
Uncle Adbur-Raheem - by
First thing
/ in the morning
/ he rushes through his prayers,
/ muttering and mumbling,
/ listing all the saints,
/ fiddling with is prayer beads
/ staring at the ground,
/ troubled,…
Hedge Sparrows - by
You don’t see many hedges these days, and the hedges you do see
they’re not that thorny, it’s a shame, and when I say a hedge
I’m not talking about a row of twigs between two lines of rusty
barbed wire, or more likely just a big prairie where there were
whole cities of hedges…
Plantain - by
Plantain suckers dib the dirt
/ and tip the crumbled sod.
/ Their questing noses, moistly new,
/ run at independence
/ with pushy pokes.
/
/ Each last, older inch
/ runs…
Cattle-count - by
1, the rust-red one, hide-gleaming:
/ 2, the blackandwhite one,
/ like a pied crow:
/ 3, the zebra-hide, long belly-knotted:
/ 4, the…