A Winter Field Sleeping

 

A quilted throwover of warm brown earth

Lies gently rumpled across the valley field.

 

A deep pile fabric - what DO they call it? –

                                      The name escapes me!

But Victorian table covers were made of it.

Like moquette - but looser rooted - Chenille perhaps?

 

A silvery magenta sheens where light catches

The smooth planes the digger blades have made

On one side of huge chunky divots of earth.

The shadowed side of these great hunks

Are rough cut, chopped, half melted chocolate.

 

A silky ash-blonde fringe

Passively drapes itself over the field hedges.

Curving subtly into the ditches.

 

Over Autumn

These stalks of hedge herbs and grass

Drain Down -

Give back their lifeforce to Mother Earth.

But their hollow temples

Now offer a shelter from the wind and icy rain

To any tiny creature

Who may break a hibernation

And venture out for winter forage.

 

These free-form, thatched sanctuaries

Are winter bleached, wind beaten and weather bent,

But still spry and dry enough

To hold up the snow,

As it shrinks back through the freeze

And arches away from Mother Earth's warm touch

In a crusty, hoary, delicately rimed and feathered frost skylight.

 

Above the delicately etched, cross hatched, ash blonde fringed hedge,

Are droopy dollops - lumpy wodges - of slumped snow

Refrozen in mid-thaw,

 

The bedding hangs - Framed:

Fat feathered duvets tossed up to air

On the trees, gates and hedges of this many postered bed.