- Nigel Speight
Blog 3
Updated: May 28
Freda and I are lucky in having access to three parks at the moment, so while we keep being told how “abnormal “ everything is, it can take only a minute or two to realise how, for every other species on the planet, 2020 is completely normal. Except perhaps where we are destroying habitat, although that has become entirely normal now so they are probably used to us doing that.
Apparently one of the positives emerging from the crisis is people reconnecting with nature without Sir David Attenborough doing a running commentary. Closer contact with landscape and animals can help with mental health as well as phusycal, though not necessarily on grouse moors…
Anyway, you have got some “nature” poems coming up.
I have always loved the way Gerard Manley Hopkins, DH Lawrence and Dylan Thomas in particular tried to render natural subjects in poetry without drifting into sentimentality. Nature is red In tooth and virus. Trying to express the physical, though not or landscape, and only exercising anthropomorphism with comedy in attendance is an enjoyable technical challenge too
The bridge in “Swallow” is the Victorian metal bridge over the Thames linking the South end of Port Meadow in Oxford with Bossoms boatyard. Hopkins stood there and of course, the churchyard where Tish is buried is at the back of Binsey that Hopkins wrote on as well.
I have no axe to grind in these poems. They are just descriptions designed to underline beauty. I hope they work that way for you.
Sunflowers
The first shoot
presses out like
a baby’s head,
A soft, white
knuckle nudging
crumbs of soil
aside, before
moisture-hoisting
centimetres
stretch all
summer long,
cell-by-cell,
into metres
draped with floppy
heart leaves
hanging like
elephant ears.
An invisible
rocket has
vapour-trailed
a barnstorming
beanstalk,
at the last up-
periscoping
its crowning
glory: ramming
a golden
tatty hat down
on a dark, close-
cropped skull.
Swallow
If you stand still
in the middle of this bridge,
air softened by the blooming
warmth of a summer dawn,
swallows can slash
inches from your face
like a Samurai sword.
A milky breast
bullets past with
a flash of sharp focus,
so that invisible midge
about to feast on
your skin is now
stuck in a red throat
awaiting digestion.
Evenings, their aerobatics
nip to within millimetres
of the river: ancient
arrowheads, skimming
to drink and feed off
long, scimitar curves,
wings dipping for the final
twists of the knife.
At their twin
tips, wings
scissor open and close.
Blue Tit Feeding
In flight,
bouncing on air,
skimming the sky,
between slim trees,
the line like a child’s,
drawing a bird.
Back. About.
Blue spikey
skull cap. Face:
white, black slash,
white. Beak: dart
tip. Here. Now.
Eyes: tiny
holes. In. Out.
About. Dart up.
Down. Peckish.
Peck. Peck. Flee.
Back. About.
Hop. Wait. A
tic? Scratch. Llllegggg-
blurr. Toc. Peep.
Fidgety fluff
up. Sleek. Right.
Left. Peek. Hop.
Pop off. Back.
About. Peck.
Now. Here. Peck.
AGHH! Great Tit.
A bout. Nearly
pecked.
Gone.
Orgy
Gnats can fly backwards and upside down and they can turn on the spot.
Their wings beat 1,000 times a second. Roughly.
More tango than tangle,
these tiny flies are hanging
out on their 3D dance
floor, quickstepping on
air.
Their elastic chassis involves up
and down like a siren’s song.
Invisible eyes, legs and wings
(plus systems to feed them/reproduce)
knit this floating Ball
of dizzying precision,
making synchronised shoals or swirling
flocks seem mere conformists.
Here’s instinct at its most ingenious and fecund:
if they were exercising choice,
they would be choosing several times a second.
Have they all met before?
Don’t be absurd.
Will they ever meet again?
In the stomach, maybe
of spider, bat or bird.
Are they all the same?
Are some a bit of a character?
A “Look at Me!” male, pumping fizz into his
bzzzz and aiming for the closest near Miss?
A double quick spin
turn, reverse, flex
and then he’s topped her.
If we had sex like this
we’d fall out of bed;
then out the helicopter.....
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