Late May at the Levels
In the heightened sunlight
I do not recognise this place.
An industrial skyline.
A foreground of reen and reeds.
What is this fissure on the path?
What is that barricade of shade?
Tree shadows take mouthfuls
out of the lane.
Pylons march away, unmoving.
Tense cables hum the limitations
of our progress.
A disused factory chimney.
Brick and concrete boxes
softened by nettles.
At the exact
centre of things
a cuckoo sings.
I consider life through a deep screen of reeds.
Pylons are not
the eyesore they once were.
Too much has happened since.
Now corvids protest
the warmth
of dark feathers.
Geese wings
fan humid air.
By the estuary
ducks bug
a summer suck
of mud.
At the exact
centre of things
a cuckoo sings.
Ivor Daniel lives in Gloucestershire, UK. His poems have appeared in A Spray of Hope, wildfire words, Steel Jackdaw, Writeresque, iamb~wave seven, Fevers of the Mind, The Trawler, Roi Fainéant, Ice Floe Press, The Dawntreader, Alien Buddha and After… . He is on Twitter @IvorDaniel
Black Nore Review 