We cut under that first mist
[above her swimming ditch]
as other walkers walked [as
if blind]/ That laundry-stink
from Himalayan balsam is an
alien scent alongside her – I
let her loose again – to swim
Tag: nature
I Fear Quantum Entanglement
Quantum entanglement stumped
Einstein – Albert’s atomic mess &
particle debates – we haven’t any
idea – twins separated but stuck/
Lovers – undo-able – living hell in
split localities & love songs faster
than light – such unbearable stuff
in ink – in print – in doubt [yet still
bombs were made]/ A secret art –
quantum physics best left to Bell
& west coast hippies looking to a
mystical connection with eastern
philosophies/ Or not [set by God]
Do not enrage that spooky beast
[or wave off ideas by Mr Einstein]
A Fox Replaced
A fox replaced my dog
[momentarily] below a
hood of low brambles/
I took that uneven path
around my youngest’s
school to avoid fools &
cars – a quiet dog walk
but underlined – now –
by that beaked snout –
slouch of red pelt near
to Scout’s colour – spit
of white tips too/ Low &
mean in her halt as she
looked me up & down –
a bitch – I know vixens
After Lockdown
My walking stick whistles
[but I cannot]/ We are met
by ire-blue clouds – hefted
& sullen in gestation – sick
of their sour discomfort &
weight – brushwork inks &
greets hard from her stain
above us & hail hits us – it
stings skin on Firle Beacon
finding ice-stoned sinners –
a sheep pen & spiky patch
of brambles is a salvation/
A battered cyclist wobbles
past [his lycra-skin too thin
to shield him]/ Dog owners
bend as their pets lag [This
squall was never forecast!]
We forget God is covetous
& not one to bow to orders
from torpid meteorologists
droning in air-less studios/
My walking stick whistles –
a note blown across height
adjustment holes – but I do
not/ Frore-misery urges us
to a warm pub’s profanities
[where ice is better served]
& here I’ll warm your hands
& we will plan our re-routed
way – furores’ll not stop us –
we walk on [& to anywhere]
Attenborough and the Giant Egg
An island’s evidence [pitted – rimrose]
lies strewed between deserts & roads –
as if scattered wide by petulant thugs/
They infer hellacious avians feeding on
everything! – held in scythe-sized talons
& other such asinine stories trolled to
travellers waving tourist-green dollars/
Their eggs – hacked to shards [almost
aged vases] now a cracked paradox of
parts – too widely cast to dig up quick
answers for Sir David Attenborough or
others with questions [& audiences to
thrill]/ Madagascar remains a blast for
khaki-shorteds & battered Landrovers
whilst fady fables unsettle local heads
who will whisper elephant bird stories
on & on [Fear was man’s earliest mace
but giant eggs filled his ravenous face]
Mole Traps
You almost trip on another
tipped mound of grey sand
Turned soil reverts to fulvid
shades as our strides drop
us down to a black expanse
of foul-water ditches – thick
as if cooled off tarmacadam
& stinking [once kicked up]
A retreat to my childhood &
set aside meadows [framed
by dead streams – ore-stain
& pollutant slicks – no fish]
as July sun seared a stench
without equal – we could be
smelt at 100 yards [told off
we stood peeling outdoors
to shake off boots & scabs
into pleshes of dirt & blood]
There would follow bickers
of hungry voices – boys at it
with daytime treaties forgot
when hauled from outdoors
[our at-the-end-of-my-tether
mother cannot stomach us
Why four boys – Jonathan –
not a girl – me #3 a mishap]
Best left buried – eh – Mike?
Stay keen – about molehills
Our Last Songbird
What day is it? Does it matter
to anyone - perhaps for those
itemizing them now? I dunno’
I’m a chancy man [chav & liar]
among low canopies of song
Envy is mine – their names are
half-known – all descants new
even though I have listened to
them [countless times] before
in other coppices – other ways
We freewheel blind & armed –
so forsaking archaic relations
to & with & of – as if moments
no more matter & we are not a
scientific fact – we are an ugly
creature keeping to First Laws
of Motion [we become forces]
& having writ such rules shiver
them apart – with no remorse –
no hang of head – unless dead
& then we count those missing
souls & breeds – no songs left –
& we howl had-I-wist as if it did
really matter – as if we cared &
felt – but we are liars – perjurers
Going Native
For S.L.
I can see you on that island/
You’ve no eyed connections
to newscasts or family ires/
Besort as a neolithic settler/
Greater lightness in solitude
will mark your return to auld
ways – to pull you to undress
[& be stripped away]/ Let me
find you under lordly clouds/
It would be so worth crossing
crested water with grumbled
descants off a [breeze-burnt]
ferry-man… I see she’s gone a
wee bit odd.. Aye it’s isle-fever
& it’ll only go by frostbite’s nip
..Is she a close friend?.. You’ll
get close.. as a bawhair.. Aye!
[& other lewd remarks about
your naked ways are so cast]
as his rusted craft stammers
into slamming waves – I’ll not
respond – I’ll hold to my word
[borne in my light backpack]/
There’ll be only one question –
Is there enough space [in your
borrowed bothy] for me to set
out my now-removed clothes?
Also on Medium
Last Orders
I perched – waiting – at The Crow & Gate
No beer or trucked food today – CLOSED
It may be another end to our world [who
cares?] or a glitch – a hard reset request
by Nature – it may be Far East iniquities/
We live in fear of failures – but not major
fuck-ups – they aren’t Western dilemmas
[only in movies & games]/ Her hell-black
crow sits immobile/ Mother will succour
rich pickings once morgues see queues/
Nature knows best/ We are a mere virus
with a lifespan determined by conditions
beyond our reach [we perch on surfaces]
Walk Under
I do not think enough
[but what do I know?]
Do not urge to things
Time is an urn set to
boil / I have elevated
my unaware body up
& down to my stomp
[I do not know much]
in wood lands – but a
month of rainfall has
ruined paths [here I’ll
rest & rewrite lines to
coppice my hobbling
thoughts] My writing
[I do not know much]
diminishes [by rained
engineering] washed
by a bowing stream’s
volume / My throat is
of that choir – its hold
turns down my levels
[I don’t know enough]
But what I still know –
when breaths expires
we’ll be glad for more
until it sucks from us
tight Parkinson’s calls
There is … nothing now
There is … nothing now
No weather to speak of
No kicked-up teasing of
litter to torment my dog
No layering lakes of hail
and no struggles of heat
No stern frosty response
across this opened field –
no boot-cracked ditches
No complaints & nothing
re-touched or tipped into
a bending under old rules
There is no compulsion …
The Shortest Day
Time has not yet inclined enough
to coerce any kind of difference –
perhaps later – sometime in June
when we’ll see our pined-for light
[stuck as we are – in addled mud]
Our need for summer dried paths –
of kicked up grit – of lifting dust –
of seeing our harder route ahead –
no more digging out trod-in ooze
Scorched days will be our saviour
is a rumbled thought under clouds
But we forget how humour sweats
under a higher temperature in our
too quick to exsiccated landscape
Longer days will not find us shelter
from any localised weather events
& so we reshape our collars & caps
to make this shortest day bearable
Attend Such Priests
Tarred feathers
in seam wings
laid heretofore
as if thoughtful
– a crisscrossing
of arms behind
& into clasps of
fingers – lightly
lip-touched rings
Breeding vanity –
expanding skulls
& slowing retorts
of our black-eyed
priests – fattened
by wine & bread
They’ll endeavour
to find weightless
flight in short-time
Their slow parades
under raven capes
instil a sort of fear
into those weaker
fellows in our flock
Attend such priests
You can walk with me
You can walk with me
along another path
It’s not too far
but be aware of fallen trees
Watch for twisted boughs –
turned like a lover’s thighs
crossed – coyly – enough
to keep to wedding vows
An overnight layering of leaves
masks raised roots
A wild rose curls – armed
with thorns bared like teeth
Without broken clouds
there is less to see –
no backlit leaves
to play out a sideshow
It is this gate now
Complexity in Crows
Each crow’s
pinned quill
branches out
becoming barbs
then – suddenly –
into barbules
and finishes in
gripping hooklets
of a so-necessary
huge smallness –
clasped to take flight
from groundings –
such technology
we cannot match
Just south of Nash Street
Just south of Nash Street
lies an eye-straight road –
not laid by bent-to Romans
or rutted under lost pilgrims’ carts
but a later by-way pegged
between tool-twisted turns
of fleece-carding pricking wires
nailed to long-paced posts
Untouched oaks claim sunlight
in their overhead boundary
Their bare roots act as hazards
for my blind spot boots
which then slip on acorn grit –
that loosely rolled resurfacing
of brittle spawned shells
under emptied boughs
All found-hushes are lost
to door slams of a far off shotgun
At a saturated junction
unknown mushrooms stand
as if randomly placed bollards –
circles of tipped fragile caps
standing more connected
to this land than ourselves
We take a hard turn
to find – again – our east
to leave that subsoil route –
to tread on returning home tarmac
Birch Polypore
Scores of lady’s gloves reach
out on this chain sawn patch
whilst less urgent saplings
have slower ambitions
There a sometimes-killing –
but also useful – fungi
sprouts from a rot-set
silver bough
You see it too –
but as a foreign shell
washed up far from tides
without a limpet’s blind tenacity
I tell you – it is also known as
razor strop fungus –
due to its rough edges –
many lost uses – like fire carrying
We crush this season’s litter
stopping at bright busting
sweet chestnuts –
buffed peel-able virgins
to be split by my heeled
crush – to an extraction
Along our crackling path
of bitter acorns – those
discarded ancient fruits
of last week’s storm –
we see where swung blades of gusts
broke a woodsman’s coppice
A Fly
Their work is a helix
of holding patterns
A vexed blackhead on
a narrowing radar
Making no sense
to us
Look across its eyes
at your broken reflection
Pass over its light speed
of thinking centrifuges
Be left behind
on our side of thought
We are not quick enough
to read their flight plans
We are fixed lives –
we are their filth givers
Again – Another Fall
Again –
it is that time of year
of carcasses picked apart
by visits of daggered beaks
of leavings
of black stains
of crushed-to berry juice
of later felt stomach aches
[spread like buckshot pellets]
A stag is stretched –
set upturned –
laid out of the way –
dead parallel to passing traffic
with its legs rigid
in its last-struck gallop
Roadkill –
it is that time of year
of car strikes
between Uckfield
and Halland
in Sussex
Again –
another Fall
Fraxinus Excelsior
Here – I have been orange-dotted
as if another fungal-blighted tree
Spotted on for obvious lesions
My fate sprayed – eyed – to-be-cut
and then left to rot – an alienation
for the good of these woods
My body bears an odd contagion
as does our less common ash –
as does our elm – both under threat
as am I – stuck – until my balding crown
is tipped to unstable and then falls
to leave me without my honest Cordelia
Dyer’s Weed
Weld produces a yellow dye
so it is known as Dyer’s Weed
among other local names –
but forever it will be an alien
in your North American fields
It grows very well in dry soil –
often found by dust-kicked paths
Its thrusting pale flowers produce
clouds of insufferable pollen –
but it is hip with our bees
Amateurism
I want your planes to stop
I want your cars to stop
I just want to hear my stick
atop this pitted blacktop
and be able to name each call
of fifty-ish birds –
that is all – before
their loss from our low land
Below Snatts Lane
Our spun dogs leapt
into a hidden swank*
only reappearing – only –
when cooled
by that glum – that cold –
woodland pond
Their wet coats stunk
Quick on spindle legs
they fast-darted in
and faster beneath
another clump of
undergrowth
Not late enough – not then –
for mist-above-dusk
over heat-sucked ditches
and almost rivers
Not late enough to rise
from dew weighted grass
We followed those routes –
those laid before
by others and left those
laid behind by us
We were those last two
travellers on earth
*swank – Sussex term for wetlands
Driving Lessons
A car ahead of me
clipped a pigeon
which spun upwards
in recoiled flight –
it exploded
showing pink flesh
where belly feathers
were plucked
and then blown by
confetti’s law of dispersion
My father instructed me
in his squeezed art
of sporting kindness
after his blasting –
often winging –
grain-gorged vermin
My air rifle’s muzzle
there – softly planted –
then – a lead pellet
for a quick death
There was time to turn
my steering wheel
and put my nearside tyres
correctly in line
with what remained –
what moved –
what was once a bird –
off my racing line
to feel a hard – then a soft
hump of tyres and death
A Common Spotted Orchid
For JC
It is a highly successful
coloniser of wasteland
and not at all in danger
Both my Google Lens
and a quickie Wikipedia
yielded to your knowledge
Just an assurance of such –
there was no doubt in my mind
that you were right – none at all!
Seeing such beauty has an effect –
How can a thing so vivacious
be left – without being taken?
An uncommon allure
among easy rough grass –
there is more to this orchid
Such observations ran quick
as my eyes and mind
took you – assiduously –
from behind
Furze
They grew low gorse
alongside their homes to
thorn-tie bright laundry
under drying high winds
Clym cut back high furze
and disappointed his wife
It is a rough plant for sure
but promises – or removes –
depending on your view –
kisses by force of fashion
It was an uncrossable border
in my common land youth
There was a story of a man
recovered from a thorny whin
by a coastguard helicopter –
help waved down by his hand
Furze flowers were yellow pebbles
for insects to skip between
It was my first time on Ashdown
in a too long time – and bared
gorse was my quiet surprise –
We have lost natural assurances
We once knew a season’s place
by month-ends and blossoming
Also here: Places of Poetry
Breakages Will Be Paid For
If we retune our focal point
to close-up local degrees –
before losses mount and tip –
we will shore our existence
Beauty is frail underfoot and
to be stepped lightly upon –
not a fixed distance of
uncrushable listed hillsides
Those huge labelled targets
are easily miss-able
Our urgent responsibility
is in within our short reach
of to-touch and other such
breakable display items
Measured Life
Under a stiff corrugated sheet
was a lizard king – an envy green –
coloured in by me of your wild place
hidden by your bungalow frontage –
Bungalow is a foreign word
replanted a century ago in this country
Your garden is an eyed up tunnel –
what the Scottish call a howk –
dug out by regard to your gate to Sussex
Your offered photography competition
places me in my last century Surrey
of huge distances lain in eyed safaris
when we met insects in squared up inches –
propped on our grass-moulded forearms
Such measurements were lost – until now
And then a sumptuous dragonfly stages
her circumnavigation of your soupy pond
to bring me back from my I-Spy enquiries
An Untitled Insect
It once had a name –
by dint of those
orange-tipped wings –
and on my tongue’s tip too –
a too-rare flitted hurdler
of garden hedges and fences
No one else cared
Such is our loss of simplicity
that even a vibrating bee’s hum
seems misplaced – mechanical
Our young dog was spell-bound
by a fat black house fly –
I no longer swat them
Mother and Child
Slunked – almost cursed
being its low artfulness
among suburban yards
and spade-ruled beds –
brushing its rusted pelt
and curling as if a stole
fixed around that fat neck
of some awful woman
There was a dead cub –
clubbed and bloodied
by a car – or a truck –
on that stretch of road
from Lewes to Glynde –
Still intact – but still dead
as rushed traffic passed
without crushing it – yet
Our Nation’s Favourite
Under vintage leafless beeches
you gauged your variations of steps –
it was too easy to tread unevenly
on a path of cross-hatchings
and line workings against sunlight –
there you dipped into a greyed intensity
of illustrative shadowing – losing our dog –
briefly – in a denser pencilled place
Then sweet eyewashes of flowerings
lifted your head – a sugared inhalation –
a thickened spoor of air-blue scents
poured from that ancient under-storey
You stood above ten thousand bright dabs
bent to old arts across a green daub
of workings among greys and silvers –
your count of a whole year gone
was marked by a favoured calendar shot –
another easy colour-by-numbers to fill
once you made your way back to our car
to tell of your walked losses and findings
That’s All Folks
We are suckled
on distortions
of God-given truths
before widescreen tales
Anthropomorphism Rules
Recall childhood absurdities
e.g. Tom and Jerry
showing ink-stained human ways
drawn on pets and pests
We squeeze other species
into a blender of credibility
Perhaps our normalised violence
was induced by cartoon irons
those height-dropped anvils
cast by Dastardly’s Muttley
alongside Disney’s kingdoms
of deviations from the norm
We have taken all naming rights
and re-arranged such old orders
No wonder
that we no longer see
any natural way in this world
Blackthorn
Names are forgotten
such as blackthorn
here a splattered blossom
over an emptiness
frangible orange points
on peeled white petals
frill-thrusted branches
but bereft of greenery
and display case labels
The Colour of Spring
There a flash – yellow –
clowning in mid-February –
our foolish
fault – a false overwintering
for spring-tricked innocents –
bringing slow recalls
of others’ tales of good luck
indicated by such arrivals –
or was it about good times –
or was it about
a sure proximity of death?
Leviticus found leprosy
in yellow and thin hairs
The inopinate-insect dared
loops of dead brambles
as an unexpected daytime
show of colour in London –
before a fatal frost by night
E170219
This Parish
We stick to the leaf-kicked route –
a parting of the dry sea of leaves
cleared by dog-following boots –
We tack down its meandered drop
to the time-softened abyss –
plugged not by God – but drains –
where a watercourse once hollowed
the hillside into this shallow dean –
before the slugs of tarmac upstream –
Here the irregular plots of silver birches
ignore the fallen old lady in lime green –
this is the parish of ineffectual giants –
these natives – a copse within the woods –
are a finger-daubed fearful tribe in white –
chary – waiting – as if standing ready –
listening for the infected invaders
from other places – for intruders
who will bring other such followers
to spread the canker and pestilence –
which was not the way things changed –
not until we changed the weather
October Half Term
The paths were soft under me today
although this low sun is still capable
of tricking the insects into revival –
setting off a dragonfly over the bridge
and pulling late flowers from pods
until the quick slaughter of an early frost
will clear our compound of anxieties
for the seasons – those off-kilter fears
which are felt as warmth on the skin –
At such a late time of year – she says
to her friend over steam-lifting coffees –
I rest my stiff legs under the cafe table –
I feel no quiver of guilt at the dried mud
which is the hardened path to my seat
The Impatient Plant
The Himalayan Balsam’s scent
clogs – a laundry swill of smells –
lingering – invasive – out-of-place –
underlining the call to action –
Since its foolish introduction
it’s no longer welcome here
Almost sticky – swollen with pollen –
it waits with near-primed seeds
until it fires ripe-wide explosions
finding further incursions
Balsam Bashing – its removal –
is now a nationwide fixation –
The bent stem-cutters – the pullers –
are impatient traditionalists
who tug – with gardening gloves –
working hard at their final solution
The Butchers
There – baited by the thump
of traffic several times –
it looked more than dead
with its striped pelt ripped open
There between the rush
of commuters and trucks
magpies took greedy pleasure
from the brock’s speedy kill
There the spill of pink inners
across the black tarmac
was a shiny reminder
that this pile was once alive
Here on my return journey
the carcass is less – now bated –
but not by the mischief of birds –
instead by a compaction of cars
Gravesend
The singing whale
sang canary song
swimming upstream
in the river of kings
Almost a portent –
a white flag of truce –
dipping and guiding
her head by the moon
There will be a dinghy
to greet the creature –
to check her origins
and to refuse a visa
We know too well
that her journey will fail –
in that dead end course
taken by other whales
Late Out
This dessicated path
is an off-white scar
under the moon’s phase
of waxing gibbous
Boots and tamed dogs
have worn this route
into a grass-bare map
which I read by that light
The holding flightpaths
of man-made meteors –
of ephemeral accords –
circle among the clouds
The transmitter mast blinks
with a beast’s red eye
shaming Arcturus and Mars
so even those stars fade
This as the bypass hums
a song of our war won –
our tilt against creation
by over engineering
Ali
This latest named storm
is as magnificently loud
as Seaford’s raw shingle
when overturned by tides –
but now it is tipped across
the highest of these trees
which emit fearful creaks
and then offer a low footfall
of snapped touchwood
These tall variations
take each sucker punch
like hardened pugilists
with their bent bones –
whilst whipped saplings
spill their dried germen
as they cower and crowd
like ingrateful men
sheltered from a fight
I sit to rest my shuffled legs
and shut my blasted eyes
to truly see what I can hear
as the stripped off leaves
fall in layers around my seat –
each arrival noted by the puff
of a soft landing on another –
In the hush of this ripped storm
I find my ancient connections
Into the Trees
Under the trees we find the path –
that one we missed last time –
and climb above the flood plain
on which – five miles downstream –
fools build fifty-four homes
We are now in nature’s green skin
where branches and hand-propped boughs
form unfinished rough shelters –
these experiments and adventures
decay to an undesigned usefulness
Further on the slunked gully runs –
here kids built mud and stick dams
until a wire fence was erected
and that sucking and silting stream
was blocked from the apprentices
The track is beaten and heat-cracked
which encourages youngsters on bikes
to take the risks we also under took –
but we hadn’t the engineered machines
on which they hurtle as fearless riders
The trees reverberate with monkey calls
and the shrill complaint of a lost child –
it is as if the internet doesn’t exist
as the off stage scramble of children
escalates – not quite Lord of the Flies.
The Cull
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.
Cut
Here the grass cuttings rise
against the graveyard wall
that sloping mound
which will cover us all
when dug steam rises
routing a sour mash
of nature’s rotted flavours
I inhale sweetness
The Witness
They are overshadowed by that evergreen giant,
the one thousand year witness to ceremonies,
to burials, and namings.
Coal was once hoarded where the hollowing
of the yew meets the earth. There, inside God’s tree,
they find a held shelter,
but the air is reduced, taxine within the yew’s
five propped branches, he is hallucinating
as he tastes her,
that passed mead of love, now drugged by her.
Add Odin’s ability to bind and unbind,
and a two millennia lie,
he has no defences left, hung, and crucified
by the centre of her which wets his fingers
in the yew’s compression.
Design Faults
That bent fence,
greened by its
northern aspect,
no longer upright,
in need of fixing,
or replacing
entirely,
and around it
the living trees
remain immune
to such a weak,
heathen, design.
MIKE BELL | 10,000 Poems 