“The bright green of summer wheat/with the brown of the ducks that stalk the fair/dykes where the raft spiders search for things to eat.”
I am used to the calm of the flat lands:
horizons on all sides and a musty
smell. Winds through the tall reeds and warped tree stands
that bend the same way. Clouds scud through the sky
burnt blue in summer to highlight the pink
and yellow of the scented water plants.
Loosestrife and water lilies and the blink
of sun on the lodes where the bitterns chant.
The thin roads sink into the coal black soil,
which fills quickly when the squally rains come.
Fen ponies from the eastern lands can toil
their way through the deep mud, grazing the dumb
sedges while lapwings flit upon the breeze.
The farmers struggle with the floods but still
survive through summer suns and winter freeze:
the good soil promising more than they will.
I walk these lands so aware of the air
on my skin. The bright green of summer wheat
with the brown of the ducks that stalk the fair
dykes where the raft spiders search for things to eat.
Grass snakes slither across the paths at close
of day when the sun accents the flatness
with the colours of autumn. Daylight flows
away into the night till the moon’s dress
brings a fairy enchantment to the fens
with its wildness of senses free from men.
Glenis Moore has been writing since the first Coronavirus lockdown and does her writing at night as she suffers from severe insomnia. When she is not writing, she makes beaded jewellery, reads, cycles, and sometimes runs 10K races slowly. She lives, with her long-suffering partner and three cats, just outside of Cambridge in the flat expanse of the Fens, United Kingdom.
