The river’s breath creeps up
and beyond the bedroom window.
We awake to luminous daylight
on the first day of autumn.
But my mind goes back
to a different bedroom,
a different window,
a view blanked out by a white blanket
which, slowly clearing, reveals
our field, the bordering trees,
the sight of more fields
sloping to the south,
to the distant unseen sea
and its deserted beaches.
Unseen too are the late ripening blackberries,
the vixen looping along the hedge,
pausing to listen for a hoped-for prey.
Unseen are the screaming swallows
for they have departed their cowshed beams,
their third brood fed fat by the bounty
hovering above the cut hay meadow.
Here, the mist is thinning
now, drifting from the panes
outside our bedroom’s windows.
The leaves are dropped from the copper beech at the churchyard’s margin,
the dried fruits are falling from the ornamental pear
and we, like butterflies fluttering
a last hurrah in the shed,
lie wriggling, cocooned in our soft sheets
contemplating the future,
the passing of the seasons and the day
when the sun will again stand still.
Poem written for a creative writing task on ecology
Zenrinji 