Friday, 25 April 2025

SPRING SCENTING... (My new poem about seeing badgers in the gloom at Temple Balsall, Warwickshire, 25th April 2025...)

 Spring Scenting…



It became a dusk-to-dark loitering quest in abject silence.

Barely dared to shift my feet. Or crack a twig, or sneeze 

 From the nearby overwhelming rapeseed fragrance

In yellow fields, the stems unwavering in a slight breeze…   


A murky dullness crept beneath the scented copse, cradled

By a canopy of foliage, yet soon, quite unexpectedly,

A badger appeared upon a low ridge yonder, which sidled

Quickly away into a gaping hole, scuffling haphazardly…


Another adult badger made a more adventurous approach

To where I stood, perhaps nervously, certainly with caution,

Before sniffing at the air. No nearer though did it encroach

And we both froze, before it panicked and retreated with rapid motion… 


The light had almost disappeared from the wooded glade,

When a young badger’s head popped up, a few metres ahead

Of me to graze on the food around its sett which I had carefully laid,

Then stopped, seemed to look my way, sniffed the air and instinctively fled…  



Pete Ray

25th April 2025…      


It had been a long time since I had last seen the countryside badgers at Temple Balsall.



The light became very poor but at least I managed to get a little footage of the two or three which emerged from the darkness and ate the food provided… 

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