We lost a beautiful village path
that wandered across a hill
behind the railway.
Once bats flitted through the branches
of dark overhanging trees,
in their dusk display.
Blackbirds, chaffinches, and tiny wrens,
among the tangled hedges
loved to hide and play.
Then a farmer drove his tractor and
cut it with a brutal flail, that
blasted it away.
Old bushes, elder, rose, and briar
were ripped and splintered, each gone,
destroyed in a day.
Bare roots, forlorn and bent, stuck out
of rutted tyre tracks, left like
signs along the way.
I fail to see that this is progress,
with nature’s extravagance
tamed and made to pay.
Just like politicians flail around,
trying to tame a virus
with a bold display.
Regulations changing almost weekly
to cut our every movement,
where we shop or stay.
But, come the springtime, bursting freely,
nature will heal, grow again,
revive, come what may.
Is it too much to hope we shall revive,
begin to live again? Or will our
splintered world remain?
November 2020