MAY
The verges are bespeckled with cowslips, cuckoo flower and
the old oaks flush with spring buds,
honeysuckle unfurls in the hedges
with primrose, wood anemone, violets underfoot;
kingcups, golden in boggy patches
whilst the lambs skip and frolic
aside their scraggy mums.
Down those lanes and tracks
conjoining homesteads and farms -
springs, wells, lime pits, ancient quarries
and dotted with heaps of stone
from subsided cottages, barns
and shepherding sheds,
with crumbling mossy walling
and prehistoric bumps and humps,
where old Roman roads still
trace the OS mapped upland wilds
and the silence is silken,
threaded with blackbird-song
and the mewing of kites overhead.
Would you believe it,
just a stones-throw from town-fringes in the Welshy hills
. Dreamscapes for cyclists, hikers
- and the odd escapee elder
on a bemuddied scooter!