Many thanks to the author for allowing her marvellous poem to be reproduced here:

Tetley Field

planning app. ref. no. 16/02583/OT

 

Her Green Belt is being tightened

her gold buttercups lightweight

on the balance sheet.

 

She is accused of being a scrubber

unkempt, unfashionable

of being down and dirty.

 

But she is fecund, generous.

Her grass grows meadowed to the sun

she is brambled, oak strewn.

 

She succours field mice

thatched over in grassy clumps.

Butterflies suck at purpled thistles

 

and city dogs, blooded in her

strew small velvet corpses,

pick blackberries with delicate teeth.

 

She embraces autumn, celebrates

in a gold leaf makeover

red berried, luxuriant

 

but shawls herself in white

snow deep

for the solstice moon.

 

She practises temperature inversion

and we stand, puddled in her mud

our heads high on mist.

 

Síle Moriarty

© December 2016