Malling Down
We will seek any natural –
and unnatural – sedate shade
under these new northern arcs
of lifted latitude summers
We can still find strolled shelter
under an avenue of plane trees –
but only if dull conspirators
do not deny them a sure line
now their leaf-fat shadows stretch
over an unkempt rough plot
which is – by the hour – turned
by sweat-glazed ground workers
where annual flown-in migrants
and ever re-seeding interlopers
have lost their place of emptiness –
kept at bay by a developer’s fence