Forest styre

explanation – Gill (thank you) lead me to Ledbury Poetry Festival’s Poetry Orchard – pick one of the apples and post your poem – I picked Forest Styre …

a badger digs
and the earth
swallows dust

an ocean of time
drips life
by drop
into a band of limestone
until a season pulses
into a landscape
into the curved corners
where forests of secrets grow
where spiders knit net curtains
for worms

sweet shops open in meadows
buttercups ten for a ha’penny

a jeweller sets up shop in the woods
styres suckle the fingers of giants

summer fizzes
in the empty puddles
of cobbled streets

but even man cannot stop the wind
stripping song from hedgerow

in the silence
something stirs
an army of ants shares out the soil
owls are mapping out the night
to sell to next year’s tourists
a pip Googles the weather