In a pond at the furthest edge of the field,
fallow this year and last and before that,
are bulrushes still wintry coloured.
Who owns this field now and why it is unused
so much I do not know. I remember
travellers’ shaggy piebalds wintering here.
And, long before soya or maize, a cash crop
of broad beans, and a fox hiding in it
from the hunt – the baying hounds leashed;
the master in his red coat riding the field’s
boundaries; his black-coated colleagues
dismounted in the lane. Rain fell, softly,
pattering on the leaves. The master, alone,
on foot, continued patrolling – his coat
losing its colour in the damp dusk.
Next day, though the crop was immature,
he ordered a ‘harvest’. There was no sign
of the fox, not even its droppings.
The bulrushes, ready to seed, are still upright;
seem, at this distance, forlorn like white,
unlit candles at some lost garden party,
some neglected fête.
By David Selzer