Life Of A Naturalist (Poetry)

For S.H.

Your book of poems came today
a slim volume — your first
and now I own one Irish scrap
of heaven jacketed in verse.

‘Death’ leading in the title
but your words more living now
I have taken up the mantle
aim to write as true somehow.

We shared bugs and slime a-plenty
things the tall folk often missed
too aloof to stop and prod and peer
they’d turn away — insist

we washed our dirty hands — set free
what in the jam jars crawled
minds closed to half-inch miracles
dismissive — under-awed.

You heard the crickets in the sedge
those voices from the bog
and fingered jelly-yellow dots
apostrophed to frogs’...

Childhood-long apprenticeships
of slime beneath the nails
of stroking feathers in the nest
examining smooth scales

are what it takes — the minutiae
that passes many by
blinded by their too-bright world
the unobservant eye.

Still not too old to dig about
I potter — root on through
the mysteries all poets
whether six or sixty-two

gather to themselves some
understanding — think and feel
through every sense — unroll a magic
canvasful made real.

Let water trickle — wet the turf
and rot aged undergrowth
the earth claims all in its own time
and soil should suit us both.