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For Anne
Not so much an awakening of cheerful
Feelings upon arrival in the country,

More a sense of dreary desolation
And an acute lack of the sublime;

The ripped out remains of a slurry system
Filled with refuse and beyond, a muddy track.

Is naming seeing? This is ragwort, harbinger
of death, and see here the black tips, this is an ash;

crimson hawthorn berries, cure for heartache;
the bright, bold rosehip and here the sycamore’s

papery propellers; scattered feathers
mark the fox’s dining place, and here’s his hole,

dark tunnel in the undergrowth. Come and see.
Don’t slip.

Look at this. Unwrapping like an unexpected gift,
the tightly curled leaf, and snuggling

beneath the silken strands; a slumbering aphid,
suspended through winter’s long hiatus,

in a colony of fellow cosmonauts
cocooned until arrival in a green and promised land.

So it was with this naming that I started to see
the rough bark eyes of the birch watching you and me.

© Frances Bathgate, January 2008