Lush

Now that we no longer need to cut trees
for warships and pit props,
for cooking fires, plates and spoons,
for buildings, carts and carriages.

If Anne Elliot looked out of the window at Kellynch Hall in Somersetshire
this  summer morning
And Edward Thomas’s train stopped again in Adlestrop’s heat
this afternoon
And the French Lieutenant’s Woman
strode the full length of the cob in Lyme
as the sun set
And a couple in their 70^th decade revisited old rural haunts
from the 1950s
one week in July

What they would notice above all
is how hugely lush the trees have grown
Monsters soaring eighty foot high everywhere
Coppiced stems standing in sixty foot clumps
The field hedges machine-shaved by the council to just car height
Leaving their upper reaches intertwining branches across the road
Creating endless shadow-flecked green caverns
for Dad’s ‘Naughty lady of shady lane’ to haunt.

17 July 2015