August : August Lament

August Lament : Strawberries in December

August nineteen forty three,

beneath a crystal canopy

of sweet sunshine warm air

they took me to the seaside.

We sat on a beach as clean

as my grandmother’s kitchen,

we paddled in rock pools

whose water was as clear

as the unpolluted night sky.

They carried me laughing,

shoulder high into the waves,

and I could see small crabs

dancing on a carpet of sand,

fine white gold and blue.

We climbed up the long hill

and sat on the world’s edge, 

small fields below spread

across the landscape like

a soft lopsided patchwork, 

ochre, ebony and poppy red

stitched unevenly together

with dull green hedge and 

shimmering leafed tree. 

Here linnets and turtle doves

sang, yellow hammers made 

their nests on hedgerow banks

strewn with purple honesty,

white comfrey, pink motherwort.

From my high grassy perch

I could see diminutive

white ducks on the pond,

graceful in the rippling water;

two massive Suffolk mares

pulling the wooden plough,

their chestnut coats glowing

flames against the soil dark

first furrows of the year.

And there were butterflies,

Large Tortoiseshells orange

bright, the vivid Adonis Blue, 

marbled High Brown Fritillaries

and dignified Dingy Skippers.

Some seventy years later 

as the dull grey toxic cloud

rolls along the Gallic coast,

masking the sun, staining

sullen water and dismal sky,

I take myself to the seaside.

Spilled oil rimmed rock pools 

have become graveyards

for cormorant and little tern;

the laced foam, once white,

is thick with yellow sludge

meandering across a slimy 

floor of malignant polythene.

No crabs are dancing here.

Up to the top of the long hill

where, spread out before me,

a hundred acre field suffocates 

beneath a ton of vicious glass.

I see no hedges, hear no birds

sing, no wildflowers turn

their sweet faces to the sun,

no butterflies flutter in this

hot dusty August afternoon.

Persistent Greed has connived 

with reckless Progress to

lay waste to the simpler world 

of my childhood, for all must now

have strawberries in December.

                              Naomi