Saturday 29 June 2024
THE SEMBLANCE OF TRUST... (My new poem about the badgers at Temple Balsall...)
The Semblance Of Trust…
Looking on. Looking in. The inability to trust.
Affability, sociability, communication managed as ‘needs must’.
An extroverted introvert. Unemotionally emotional, a man of self-doubt.
Thoughtful, considerate and kind but truly nothing to shout about.
The small theatre of the copse offered him a refuge in plain sight.
There, unseen, alert, yet hidden as a dreamy dusk drew in the night,
Up to eleven badgers and cubs fed upon the titbits scattered
By the spectator, the observer, the loner. And to him, that really mattered.
There was something of a watchful, benign acceptance
Of this unobtrusive, shadowy, yet undeniable presence,
Which culminated around a hole, two metres away, where he tensed
As feeding by three eager bustling badgers quickly commenced.
The fellow stood, slightly alarmed, yet fascinated
As into the hole two young brocks tumbled and investigated
The peanuts deep inside the cavernous gap and entertained,
Their fussy antics natural, amusing and unrestrained…
He looked on. He looked in. There was a semblance of trust.
The hunger and the thieving magpies were for the badgers, a ‘needs must’.
The introverted extroverts, the emotionally unemotional brocks no doubt
Thought little of the interloper, the outcast in awe, standing about…
Pete Ray
29th June 2024…
Friday 28 June 2024
THE OBLIVIOUS POTHOLER: my new poem about the badgers at Temple Balsall...
The Oblivious Potholer…
Despite the encroaching sundown outside,
The shady copse, strewn with fractured,
Slim, fallen branches from green, weathered,
Tall trees, seemed like a secret, surreal place,
Abandoned even by squirrels and every woodland bird,
An enclosure basking in a curious, unsettling silence.
Soon though, like a slow and gradual tide,
A line of five badgers, almost in a structured
Advance, busily approached and gathered
Peanuts scattered upon the woodland’s wild space.
Apart from an occasional munch, little was heard
And I stood in awe and not a little suspense…
One badger soon passed to my left, not two metres away,
Investigating a small pothole in the crude, undulating
Copse’s floor where several peanuts had been
Dropped and the brock edged into the gap, dropped
Inside and for some moments turned about, then disappeared.
Scuffling and foraging, from the tight hole it soon reappeared
And its black and white face fleetingly popped
Up, snuffling, then it climbed out, its senses keen.
Yet, seemingly oblivious to my presence it stopped gyrating
And peered up at me, held my gaze then scuttled on its way…
Pete Ray
28th June 2024…
Good to see such healthy badgers encroaching, six, maybe seven feeding on peanuts in the copse.
The ground was littered by fallen branches and it was eerily silent there but one badger moved close by, disappeared into a pothole and finally reappeared, after several moments of exploration.
It then looked up at me.
Yet I had eaten a curry before setting out and I was upwind of the badgers, which was interesting…
Perhaps the clan recognised the food delivery fellow…
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