threshold - another go at this

At woods' beginning, lapped in May's riches :

 

cobalt-violet periwinkles peep

through indigo hung croziers - bluebells'

throng - sleek-cool, sap-full stems easily snapped;

 

first campion lifts soft magenta head

above high-tide of white wild garlick, smell

invisible pungent slab in tall shade

of oak and sycamore leaves, fresh-unfurled;

 

song thrush, blackbirds, robin, finches, tits, all

call into being their kingdoms of song;

 

far-faint cuckoo! cuckoo! tickles hearing

and near, calm, confident woodpigeons coo

over uncurling vertebrae of ferns

and low, transparent yellow celandines;

 

elegant poppies, weighed down with beauty

of silk lemon petals, while further on

bumblebees browse comfrey's pale sulphur bells

beside bursts of gorse, shining in sun-warm.

 

Climb uphill path's kaleidoscope tunnel

towards sky-glitter slits in layered greens;

 

but, as a bruise swelling, wrong awareness -

bird song becomes broken, jagged alarms...

 

Deisel! Far from roads, air's always clear, here

 

under wheel tracks' solid dark-down snarl, through

gorse and ash saplings, slim-bone fragile, smashed;

 

months' long grasses' sheaf of growing breath, crushed

and at the sides, birch roots graze-knuckled. Raw

light glares hot where should hide dim under-trees

on wide sawn off stump, rings swelling outwards

as though time were a pond-dropped stone and years

weathered ripples in the trunk, or writing

through a stick of rock that reads "Life was here".

 

Every second builds a threshold of change -

Pass or Turn, go through, let trees stand, soak up

the harm we're doing. Our children's Future

grows, rooted in Now. Will we cut and run?