fallow

A sheet of tall stemmed notes, soft rushes, grow

yellow-ochre, golden-green, and with brown

flower rests rustling, make fresh glissando

tides of sliding light in west wind's white sound.

As sun surfs, bright merges swerve, surge, so shadows 

dissolve and in calm intervals come rise

and fall, curve and flat of paired butterflies

like satin gloves in rapturous applause.

                             ~

Yesterday's breathing shield, quick, sleek field, thick

packed green, now plough-peeled back to slick soil slabs 

 of solid sea; slurred umber clay, opaque

grey skinned, in lobes of slumbering waves, traps

snapped stalks; roots, unlatched, become fumbled catches,

dark tucked. Lone crow, still as a sharp black quill

on this clean page of deep silence, watches,

ready to pull truth, squirming, into hell -

easily as we end Nature's furlough,

climate change, in a blink of planet time,

will make humans hopeless as worms below,

Earth turned back into primordial slime