Last cry for summer

I don't know where the summer months have gone. As I sit outside after work preparing home-grown runner beans for dinner, I ponder on time when I should have been writing, but instead I'm weeding or picking or preparing things for winter.

None of my creative work appears to progress and there is little new to offer. There was one poem entered for the annual poetry competition. The ajudicator passed it by saying there was too much detail and I'd left a spelling mistake in the submission. It was enough to make me crawl away and hide except the previous Saturday I read three poems at "Herbfest's got talent".

As I read the distant healing poem, the room was still.

"I don't think they breathed," Chris told me afterwards, "they seemed mesmerised." Maybe they were or maybe the poem has its own power.

Below is the competition poem. I sat under the apple tree and simply wrote what I saw for the hour I had free. I spent the following days honing words and rhythmn until it flowed to my satisfaction. The first verse has been lifted away - another moon contemplation which didn't really sit with the sunny day.

What do you think?

Chosen by rooks
Is your soil strewn with cherries?
Red skins ripped by mawkish marauders
Does your wooden bench hide strawberries?
Wild morsels of crimson sweetness
Garnets and rubies of an alpine range

Do you crunch apples underfoot?
Hard shards pressed into softness
Do you notice morsels lost amidst abundance?
Should you mourn when hundreds swell above you?
Contentedly modulating green within the canopy.

More green from pea pods where pristine petals fall
Their clusters call to bees
Following unseen flight lines to coat their fuzz with pollen
Nectar-driven pilots buzzing from yellow poppy to red woundwort
They drowned in cherries too
Humming their love song to the tree until blossoms fell

Have you noticed redbreast feeding fledgling?
Nurtured still on cherry’s bough
Carefully flitting from branch to chair to roof
Bright watching for strangers
Until he darts deep into darkness
To feed his sitting hen amidst forgotten trimmers
Their former nest forsaken for a safer space

Will you watch the white-tailed bumble rest?
Her bed of bean leaf crowned with scarlet flowers
Perhaps vermillion drops of currant catch your eye
Hanging above swollen gooseberry globes
Or yellow stars of agrimony and St John
Draw your delighted gaze on this bright day.

Such starlit gold along with silver moon
Bejewelled planting
Guarded by oak and fir
Serenaded by blackbird, robin, wren
Chosen by rooks
Let rue offer you such grace as can be gained
Within my summer garden.

Perils of Poetry Competitions

My poetry writing is very spasmodic. If I'm not emotionally wraught, I don't write! The exception is the Solihull Writer's Workshop annual poetry competition, when I try to create something.

The judge was a performance poet - very skilled, very interesting and a fantastic performer. She gave us useful tips on creating mature poetry, meaningful and enjoyable to the reader. The advice was very simple and applies to other areas of writing - edit ruthlessly, don't spoonfeed the reader, allow them to find their own meaning in your words rather than spelling it out for them too heavily.

She didn't like my poem. She said there were two many images. She also presumed the line "We stand beside hops and mugwort discussing flavourings for ale" related to a group of men, rather than the actual crowd of 7 women and one man who were there in reality. All the images I used, were sights I'd seen during 19 June, apart from the fox with the pheasant in her mouth. My father saw her a few days before and told me about her.

I shall be reading the poem at the Celebrating Herbs Festival near Stow on the Wold this weekend, along with other poems relating to Springfield Sanctuary. I hope the audience like it. See what you think!

Summer Solstice
Mid way between winters two meadows grace a Cotswold hill
Their boundaries set for centuries in stone
Summer sun shows skylarks guarding nests with song
Tall grasses ripple stippled wind-born waves
While rose briars quiver in the breeze
Blush-kissed petals surrounding yellow pools where insects drink.

Beside a wall, a stately pheasant peruses his domain
Red circle bobbing between the rye
Across the field flying formations rise up
Then disappear into a surfeit of seeds
Silent now their quest
Unlike the hearty chorus in the hazel tree at dawn.

Half way to the valley floor, a spring-birthed stream flows clear
We stand beside hops and mugwort discussing flavourings for ale
A half-grown rabbit scampers between legs to prickled sanctuary
Startled, those with sharper eyes notice a weasel
His long neck extended towards our voices
A chance hunt thwarted by our invasion

Later, a vixen trots, jaws filled with pheasant
Ruler of the grass deposed
Her fealty to growing cubs, deep in the badger’s sett
Careless, she leaps up and over one wall,
Runs across the field then leaps again
Safe home to fill bellies as feathers fly.

Colours fade as light succumbs to dark
A half-circled moon shines from blackened sky
White clouds drifting serenely across her face
I lean through my open window consuming silence
Waiting through this shortest night
For the promised dawn.