Haymaking
Hay, green and warmer
Than the sun-warm growing grass;
Layer on layer of stems and showering seeds.
Crumpled leaves, releasing scents
And memories . . .
Children screaming in delight
At slow-worms desperate headlong flight
Before the falling chaos of their world.
Mountain of hay
Slipping up! Pitchforks sway
Then high on the lurching stack
To home, with blue arcing all the farm.
And now the pleasure’s keener
For years missed in between.
Years of bricks and dusty skies
Hard and narrow as the roads,
While underfoot the eunuched Corporation Green
Is cut so mean
That walking on the grass, treading it down,
Becomes a crime.
Today I laze
Drowsy in a pot-pourri
And seem to hear from years away
Children laughing, larking in the hay.
Frances Beaumont
18/02/2022