TARRYING FOR NO REWARD...

 Tarrying For No Reward

The undulating terrain steeply dropped

Towards a river flowing shallow

Due to the meagre April rain.

Protective grassy tussocks, uncropped,

Hid setts, clawed hollow,

Yet clearly maintained…

Standing beneath the hunched limbs

Of a conifer, clinging,

I lingered in a silence

Broken only by the insistence

Of late birds’ shrill singing

But saw nothing and felt mere whims…

The natural cemetery, fundamentally landscaped

Revealed in scrubland a gouged hollow,

 Its entrance like an amber stain,

By badgers’ scrabbling claws scraped.

Hopes of a sighting though were shallow,

As dusk fell and my vision became strained…

Standing isolated in visibility grim,

As a blackbird, still singing,

Mithered in the distance,

My dogged persistence

To see a brock clinging

Was ended by joints, damp on limbs…  

Pete Ray

21st April 2022…

A different area in Temple Balsall, where I scattered food about but saw no badgers at all for about an hour…

The ground slopes away from the natural cemetery area to the river, which is currently very shallow due to the lack of recent rain.