A poem responding to a photograph from ‘The Flows’ , a collection by Sophie Gerrard
Wind knifes down across The Flows
bitter as aloe, sharp as a paper cut
over patchwork of peat and pool.
Plants, mindful of the wind grow low,
shifting colours of moss and heather.
Summer brings the bobbing heads of Cotton Grass,
Bog Asphodel in bright sunshine yellow
and the deceitful Sundew.
Pines imposed to make the land productive,
desiccated, then failed and left to rot.
Now cane dams restore the pools
for newt and frog and toad.
Curlew, Greenshank call again
and raptors carve the air.
The winter wind free of forest
knifes down across The Flows.