Storms

Trying to find the roman landscape,

meandering where nature rushes,

making sense of a landscape I know so well

but never observed; I read the names

and try them on my tongue.

I hold language in my power, and can name this land,

but I am too dictated to,

as I am twisted and turned

by the boundaries as old as time

yet etched by a minute to midnight hand,

bruises on the map.

Self-seeding, self-cleaning

the world wins when left alone -

the unnatural neatness of a gardened clearing

contrasts with the tangled mess of teasels

bending with the wind.

I lean into the storm and hear the name fly past.

If I should bend, what then?

If I should disappear like frozen frog,

or hibernate in messy pile

like cold-snap weather shocked hedgehog

would the bindweed and the ransomes overtake

or would a watchful gardener edge the lawn

and clear the path?

Another storm, another name; I do not hear the words this time,

I am protected, hat and hood

I am prepared,

and do not bend.

Susan Cartwright-Smith, February 2022