Alderley Woods, November The First Poem by Roger elkin

</>Alderley Woods, November the First

i.m. Howard Sergeant

The year is burning itself to an end.
A larch leans, its spindles yellow-celandine.
Beech leaves drift like amber sand:
it’s the sea’s swell you imagine
and shingle fingering the shoreline.

Mustard-powder-dry are the tops of the far copse.
What remains is lichenous or dried sphagnum moss.
The oak is ochred, the chestnut turned rust.
In the colour of leaves, and the smoke from the woodburner’s fire
there is cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger here.

The birch bole is ashen and limed,
and a maple with its lemon edges amazes its neighbour.
Hush, hush says the wind.
I’m always red claims the acer
dismissing the crimson-tipped sycamore.

With barely a skein of cloud, the sky is wide and clean.
The sun hangs low, albino.
The wood-dove flies a rainbow,
while, high in the elm, magpies cackle alarm
as the falcon stoops down.

In a light that is chill and thin
between nettles’ leggy stems,
above bracken hands (flat and golden) ,
stinkhorn’s glans, and acorn’s pebbly gems
gnats scrabble a crossword, across and then down.

And there, hugging the rhythm of land
where the harvest’s been gleaned, spears
of grass, tipping the seed-drill’s militia
are bringing the certain Spring.





I’m always surprised that so many poets choose to write about Spring and Autumn, subjects which have been so much written about that it must be extraordinarily difficult to say anything individual.
Howard Sergeant, Bridport and District Arts Society Creative Writing Competition, October 1982