Tag Archives

gently

INNOCENCE IN ITS SECOND YEAR

She crouches slightly to see the horses –

a grey and a bay – through the wire fence.

They are eating windfalls of sweet chestnuts.

She watches them fully open the cupules

with their teeth then tongues to eat the nuts.

They notice her, feel safe to approach.

She is not much bigger than either of

their heads. Each half a ton, they walk with the grace

and circumspection of fifty million years.

They bend their heads towards her. Fearlessly,

she offers them grass. Gently, they take it.

 

 

 

ON THE NATURE OF THINGS

From the terrace at Polesden Lacey, it was

the guttural calls caught our attention –

then sheep flowing fast over rising ground

like a pale yellow banner in the wind,

then the shepherd himself, then his dogs

flattening themselves at his command.

By the time we reached the valley bottom,

the beasts were penned – lambs from ewes,

the latter funnelled for the shearers.

The bleating drowned the whirring of the clippers.

From the high bridge over the Tweed at Kelso,

we watched a fisherman upstream cast

from a skiff – his companion sculling gently

to keep steady in the current – when,

suddenly, between us and the men,

who, of course, were facing the wrong way,

two salmon leapt from the river six feet

or more and, turning,  re-entered the depths

silently. Oblivious, on those costly

waters, the ghillie rowed, his master fished.