Brown to Green

I like the brown soil,

the smell and the spoil,

even when it sticks heavy

on my boots. The clay

flecked with flint

and dark like the season,

moulded into the landscape

by an unseen sculptor

who knows his materials,

and holding the germ

that even in winter’s teeth

squeezes out the faintest 

touch of green, as the eye

plays from foreground

to horizon gaining in

pixelated intensity like a

thin gauze, that will fill

and ripen with the year.

And while I sit and wait

and ponder and wonder

when the phone will ring,

and where the next order

is coming from, and how

we’ll cover the next quarter’s

VAT bill, I think

of that brown soil

sticking heavy on my boots.

John H Davies

30th January 2011