Nature's Test
A top-to-bottom transect of natural sights and sounds.
This poem was, somewhat naively, submitted into the Winchester Poetry Prize in 2019 but, unsurprisingly, didn't receive any commendation. I hadn't written a poem for over forty years before penning it. Yes, I know, a dreadful state of affairs. But that's what swaying towards science, medicine and technology does to you. Rest assured, all that hard-won knowledge becomes very useful when it comes to writing speculative fiction.
I find regressing into a child-like, self-permissive condition of unrestrained imagination very therapeutic. With this poem I was still fresh from my escape from CorpLand, so some visual stimulation was required ('If it's good enough for IVF clinics, it's...').
So, on a sunny May weekday, I tootled down to a languorous riverbank area owned by the National Trust on Hampshire's River Test, a renowned chalk-bed river for fresh-water fishing. Spring had truly sprung and the river was brimming with fauna, both above and below. I stood there with my notebook and... started writing. A vertical, top-to-bottom transect of Nature's sights and sounds - anything that caught my senses. It was a wonderful hour or two spent communing with the gods of small things.
I hope you enjoy the result below, which is also viewable on the Domesday-like 'Places of Poetry' site (the background to this crowdsourcing project is detailed on the Poetry Society's website). Any comment or critique is, as ever, very welcome.
On a quiet river bank I watch nature defying lethargic current to assemble life in haste. An urge to capture a transient alcove of what it has wrought, my senses deliberate, descending from heaven’s ceiling to earthy floor, onto liquid pulled by gravity from hidden spring to Dock Gate Four. Against a cerulean sky nimble clouds accumulate, their flecks of reflection a dance on glinting waters, fracturing images of tall beeches, leaves whispering in warm breezes, filtering sunlight to dappled shade. Languorous eddies drift by, chalk-filtered by dead denizens of aeons-old seas, to a distant effervescent weir, a foam injection of life-giving air. My eyes traverse, from blue and crystal to green churned brown. Ponies in a paddock, big bodies grazing, jaws grinding, growing on green humble food. Winds caress cotton-bud grasses, forced to resonate and oscillate. Their seeds falling, finding random purchase in muddy situ, to blossom or die as a certain binary fate. In atmospheric swirls, aerial life also turns. St Mark’s flies idly drift, declaring a shift to Spring’s gait. Cabbage Whites - being neither of either - show more haste than Red Admirals, who dance in occasional pairs, antennae scenting welcome connection. An iridescent beetle lands, circumnavigates a stump, but finds no gnomon for direction. Black feathers float by, relinquished to their watery fate. The moorhen’s call echoes raucously from a hidden nest, unwillingly received at best. Cuckoo chimes ring out, an atemporal boast of deceiving yet another host. A mallard passes with harem in tow, earnest followers of his lubricious flow. Paired pure white swans dip with inverted periscopes, then necks combine in a heartfelt bow. To the liquid divide, where densities collide. A splash of trout, a snout, ripples spread from epicentre to grassy bank. Fish fry bathe in the shallows, taking fright at any shadows, even one they own. Frog spawn cling in murky inlets, wriggling orphan embryos, their moist-skinned parents securing their precious cargo an iced age ago. My mind’s eye descends, imagination my friend. Damselflies daintily dip and disclaim distress from a drowned fate. Beetles as whirligigs, skaters ride mirrors transient, no stillness but no watery tensions rent. Caddis creep under rock and stone, fitting pieces to make a secretive home. Detection and evasion a constant at all their stations, piscine gullets a dubious destination. Humanity now intrudes, Earth’s failed interloper. A lone angler casts his line - not to dine - but wax lyrical ‘bout his time avoiding spouse and kids, his liberty an evasive bliss whilst sat on banks enclosed, access restricted to those who’ve paid and weighed their pounds of fishy flesh, for coveted beats marked by signs that shout: “Private Grounds and Fishing – Keep Out”.