Walking by Aldermaston (after four days)

After I shrink behind you, we leave the road,
crush frost into the grooves of winter fields,
they're sugared yet I have an almond-bitter
stone that rattles against my sternum.
Shortly, shin-pressed to the fence,
with wonder watch the warhead house
a place for manufactured death,
those lovely coffins of missiles.

But we veer, wrench magnetic eyes,
turn onto a path of ice-cold rhetoric.
You talk about the sunkenness of age,
the mossy perfection that feathers up the bank,
hair-coil bryophytes lick the earthy nape.

The history of evolution:
moss to fern to silver birch
tropism to scent to wonder.

Not far enough from drunkenness for this.
Perhaps in time I will understand
the sad beauty of the broken briars.
Show me factories, strip me to steel,
so what of creation, lichen wants nothing!

“We are the miracle, who marvel” you say
but the miracle really, is you telling me so.