# Poetry Corner

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## Walking the Weald

We walk out early,
glad of slow-growing light,
the mild air from the south:
both gifts unlooked for, now,
in a cold month only just spilling
clumps of daffodils across the grass --
nodding their honey on the breeze.

And bumblebees,
clumsy along the path-edge,
blundering into legs and sticks and boots,
like drunkards waking in surprise
to find it's morning, after all,
no longer a winter night's dreaming.

Above the greensand ridge we're following,
on the north edge of the Weald,
two buzzards go up on thermals:
spiral over spiral on invisible sky-stairs.
In their gimlet eyes we are as nothing;
their shrieked calls are in a language
meant for each other, not for us.

Then fieldfares explode ahead of us --
a hundred, more -- fling
diamond breasts into the haze; swirl,
gleeful with sunlight, glutted
on rotting orchard pears;
gleam like silver coins against the blue...

Now, all along the Greensand Way,
crab-apples, fat and red,
decorate bare trees.

*Lizzie Ballagher*