Poetry
GALLOWS HILL SUNSET (Warwickshire)
Even the brown bird flying
across the amber light
of a setting sun not yet red
is, like the trunks of the trees,
burnt orange,
their dense, dark foliage
a fist of clubs
in the hill’s still hand
until, one cloud shifts and,
under the dipping searchlight,
shadowed leaves become
burnt green,
one minute more and
all is shadow:
and now this hillside strip
of woodland waits resigned
for night to drift in
with piercing bark or shriek
of nocturnal beast, when
earth has fully risen up
and dusk to dark declined