My house invades a meadow
Risen from the weeds
Sitting in the poppies
Very soon to lose their seeds
The horsetails and the mallows
The toadstools and the twitch
Stage a demonstration
Throwing bugs which make me itch
My fence is made of wicker
So motors passing by
Will think of Saxon Ely
(More aesthetic to the eye)
The wild couch surges inward to my
Thirsty bite-size turfs
Yellow like an ancient deed
Above the living earth
I hear the cattle mooching
Behind a thorny hedge
And sudden droning echos
From the baking bypass edge.
I feel the dump of diggers
Gravelling the ground
Covering the covered;
Of a Saxon world unfound.
My house invades a meadow
Proud amongst debris
Metal rods and plastic pipes
And fibreglass blows free
The rumblings of the traffic
The trundle of cement
Roars just like a Saxon tribe
In turbulent dissent.
Uncertain sites, uncharted lanes
And unadopted greens
Valance round a guilt of lawns
And listing wattle screens.
Fondly I survey this land
and every busy creature
Soon to taste the chlorine
Of some funereal feature.
The meadow narrows by the day
Awaiting council plans
And tarmac melts around the edge
With pallid piles of sand.
The bees are puzzled by the grey
And desolate disorder
Flies alight on human wastes
For cows have gone to slaughter.
Nature is no captive
She will raise her blades in brick
Ivy curtains, blanket moss
A place for every chick.
I think the birds may sing again
The horsetail will endure
Nothing more that man can add
But 'easement for a sewer'.
Yvonne Rautenbach
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/brooke-grove/
