Wild Moment: Sam Collins
"This silent death by which we can hear the life..." Three haiku and a longer poem written during the period of lockdown
- From the top of our local crag you can see out over Morecambe bay and beyond to the Lakes. The peaks appear so tantalisingly close yet out of reach during lockdown:
The bay reflects
This evening’s red light
Dreams of the far shore
- Warton stock car racing track usually has races every Sunday out on the saltmarsh. When these fell silent, the track was colonised by a flock of linnets and their melodious song:
Once engine’s roar
Now only linnet song
A fragile refrain
- Playing on the ambiguous meaning of ‘may’. Strong late May winds had scattered hawthorn/may blossom:
The gusting winds
Have scattered May’s blossom
As spring leaves
- A longer poem I wrote about the experience of cycling or walking over to RSPB's Leighton Moss reserve during lockdown:
The birds have taken over
I ride
Anticipation growing
I crest the hill
There it is
This natural world
An expanse of reeds
A wall of noise
This is how it was
To this it has returned
Life has slowed, quietened, and into that space comes
The sound of a world which struggles to be heard
But now thunders into full voice
The wild has taken over
With its songs of freedom
Singing us free of the endless crushing cycle
Of lives lived in the machinery of the modern world
Ever faster it flails, ever louder it whirrs
Tearing to pieces this Mother Earth
Until this...
This silent death by which we can hear the life
When the machinery begins again
Will we still be listening?