The Field

The field has never been cut.
He drives past it everyday,
waits for those afternoons in June
when it is full of fritillary, eyebright,
bugle and buttercups;
Flowers that have seeded themselves,
blown in from the road.
He thinks he should keep a diary,
become an amateur naturalist,
note the date of the first star flower,
and when the rosebay signals that
the year is turning to dewed webs in the grass.
Privately he calls it the burning field.
It seems to flicker every golden colour
and he could paint it from memory.
He trespasses with his children regularly.
Emerging from the wood at the bottom
they lie down amongst the couch grass heads,
that point to heaven, and wait to
feel the earth turning.
Amongst buildings and in cities,
he returns to the endless blue,
they’ve seen above their heads, the way the field waits under snow
and then suddenly is full of ladybirds and green.
The field stays with him,
a wild meadow, always returning summer.
Where his daughter chases butterflies
and grass seed drops in sandwiches,
and he lies head to head with his son,
pretending to be Indians.
He thinks that Paradise might be like that.

Published in Reactions, University of East Anglia