It bolted into my beam
and was too fast for me
to stop the car in time –
a grey and white rush
of life under my wheels
and I could not avoid
the eye-shined badger
in the space between
ruts and embankments
A thudded weight cursed me
through the steered curves
with the guilt of road-kill –
of something too noble
which was always under
others’ orders to be culled.
The local lanes have been narrowed
by the thickening of nature’s ripeness
The scabbed tarmac routes are reduced
by the slow encroachments of greenery
Each blind corner is an increased fear
but still taken in third gear at over forty
as if TE Lawrence had never died
on such a cluttered route as this
Summer is an alien with her land grab –
her low leaf boughs weighty obstructions
which hide rotted bodies and tossed litter
until the rape of leaves under winter
I drive between my rural commitments
of drop-offs and collections along roads
which were never designed for our speeds
nor any misjudged braking distance
We dropped over Falmer
and sped past a man in white
who was bent-double
among the weighted hedges
The descent past the stadium
was a collision of thoughts –
it then offered a roundabout
and we doubled back to offer
I rehearsed my approach
reminding myself of the place
and how I would have to slow
with hazards
with a wound window
But there was no man in white
in the place
only the waving of branches
under the charge of turbulence
No one on the untrod grass
