September 26th 2023
Did the Peregrine watching me swim this morning comprehend?
This commander of all air, blading the cliff vortices
In fast-taloned slides?
Could it understand that I was not in the water to hunt,
Dived not to kill;
But was nevertheless there to gather,
Collecting memories against those days
When the weather will not suffer me in the sea?
And in the garden this afternoon
Up and down tall steps with bucket,
Regularly taking a heavied crate to the store…
Did that observer robin, solstice-muted to a murmur,
Appreciate my harvesting of apples
Against tomorrow’s threat of densely-jostled isobars,
Rain radar plots so lividly bruised?
Always beneath these nature-musings I worry
That some of our village children are so citified
They do not appreciate
The steelboom hurry of trailers,
That ploughing tractor’s dieseling urge,
Later in this season the sleeted stoop of those cauliflower knifers
Who come so very far to daily tough through the lessening daylight
Only tobacco-comforted.
These youngsters, whose ancestors at their age
Would have been rushing to fruit pick, stook gather,
Tie down rick sheets, help collie sheep back from the coast…
Our young: whose weather will ever grow less sympathetic
All thanks to those fossilfolly fools,
The future-blind older majority.
© Christopher Jessop 2023
