We walked through there so many afternoons,
rods in hand,
the bush damp and humming
with bugs and mystery.
And now it’s gone,
leaving
scraggly grass and naked rocks
humiliated.
Bricks will come soon.
I’m glad you didn’t have to see.
About me
I'm a freelance writer - fiction, nonfiction and anything else that happens to tango its way through my mind. That's for me, and I've won a competition or two, and been published in a range of media. To keep the wolf from the door, I also edit, proofread and write for other people. Love it all. Aren't I lucky?
Six Weeks in Summer – Helen Meikle. Available on Smashwords and Kindle
Dear Helen,
This is a lovely poem, short and sweet. I had similar pain around a housing development for which they tarmacked a road and carpark over some green grass and cut down a tree. The fact that they planted loads of hedges and small, new trees, didn’t seem to make up for it, somehow.
Thanks for writing! xxx :-))
Hi Fran, good to talk to you again! ‘Seizing the day’ is my own spinoff from last week’s Weekly Challenge (Lunch Posts) that I enjoyed so much I decided to keep going. Nothing makes up for cutting down virgin bush, particularly when it has good memories attached.
I used to choose my route to work depending on the season, through the poppy fields for redness in June, through the rapeseed for yellow in the Spring and through the flax fields for purple and it was wonderful. Then they built a housing estate which they had the gall to call Poppy Fields, removed the subsidy from flax and made a road through the rapeseed. Your beautifully simple poem brought all that back to me so thank you. 🙂
Thanks too for following 🙂
Following is a pleasure!
The most ridiculous thing is that this small town already has numbers of new, unsold apartments, and those already owned are only fully tenanted for a few weeks in summer. There were petitions objecting to this one – it was bush reserve – but the local council is miles away, barely knows we exist, cares less, and doesn’t turn down any possibility of money. I’m glad I’m old!