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.
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