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The month of window boxes: horned nasturtiums,
Petunias and breaking-wave lobelia
Sparkle: the dark-leaved tart geraniums
Are cautious but the party-plate regalia
Of
passion flowers trumps all. With a glutton’s smile
Blowsy
St John’s Wort bubbles like custard. In town’s-edge roughlands children with low guile
Behead dandelions and storm the clustered
Ice
cream flutes of bindweed. Ignored, the breeze
Scuffles
the rank bushes like gushing water.Grasshoppers, dauntless among vetch and furze,
Grind their tissue-and-comb call for a partner.
Beyond
are the woods. Tall spruce and dense beech
Flash
fresh growth. Beneath their shade-cool awningWood wasps dart and sing in the sun’s hot shaft,
Moths start from the path dust and grubs hang, dancing
On
threads. Hidden, a train soughs through a culvert.
Such
musky disarray! Boles, lichened boughs,Hang, lean, lie, trellised by ivy, inert
To the gross-feeding fungus. Spider and louse
Forage
under dust-heavy ferns; the brown
Dunnock,
pattering, will devour them. HighOn a birch’s flaky trunk a flame-crown
Woodpecker scatters bark, laughing mournfully:
Summer’s
workshop of instinct and sensation
Echoes
with breeding, killing and mutation.
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©
July 2013