Cold the day begins in earnest
Gathering the mist at sunrise
Magpie screams as thin beam strikes him
Keen of eye and black of feather
Crow in thicket calls his brethren
Mist arises deep in valley

Fallen petals lie in tumult
Beaten down by squall that shook them
Bramble, precious jewels wearing
Berries black that shine like glory
Blowing over endless hillsides
None may tell the north wind’s story
Dancing in the sighing branches
Casting leaves of oak and willow
Ash and beech and long-shanked rowan
Bough and twig and fallen acorn
Squirrel hoards for bitter future
Whispers tales of coming Winter

Green is now a fading memory
Leaves lie crimson, brown and golden
Ripe and awful apples moulder
Boar lies sleeping fat and sated
Mushroom blooms on rotting deadwood
Nightshade sways on tumbled walling
Fern grows dense by water running
Down by where the gravestones standing
Tell of those whose lives are ended

Clad in moss and superstition
Watching over generations
Bends the old and twisted yew tree
Shakes and laughs with storm-wracked holly
Waiting for the day of reckoning
Biding time through mankind’s folly
Hears All Hallows Eve a-beckoning

Grey October dawning,
mist hangs low in woodland
Fading is the season,
beech and oak leaves falling
Tangled are the brambles,
overgrown and berried
Spider in her leaf-hide,
sees her web bejewelled
Drowsy cattle standing,
breath and wet flank steaming
Sunrise gleams on water,
streamlet coldly flowing
Wasted grasses leaning,
trampled under hoofprint
Fern and mosses greening,
close by wall of sandstone
Early sings the sparrow,
yarrow flowers whiting
Sluggish flies the bee now,
nectar scarce inviting
Owl in tall tree sleeping,
shuns the day awaking
Fox in earthen breastwork,
sated now from hunting
Rabbit sniffs the morning,
burrow mouth beguiling
Scent of mould and mushroom,
undergrowth pervading
Fallen tree trunk rotting,
spotted red with fungus
Naked roots stand grasping,
fingers locked in death throe
Down in dew washed meadow,
foal lies red and stillborn
Sadly stands the old mare,
one year past her blessing
Nevermore to call home
her stallion by evening
Hidden in the hawthorn,
by blood-red berries dripping
Carrion crow watches,
waiting for her leaving
Patience is his virtue,
soon to know the feeding.

He switched off the TV and turned to his wife;
“That's the worst news report that I've seen in my life!”
She tidied their supper away and she said,
“I’ll be dreaming of that when we’ve long gone to bed.”

“Did you see all that famine, starvation and drought?
Well it sure makes you think what this world’s all about!
Global warming and climate change melting the poles;
I just wish someone used some pollution controls.”

He nodded and sighed as he straightened the chairs;
“Can’t believe all that bloodshed caught me unawares!
It’s just seems there’s a war every place that you look;
Religion and greed?  Hell, they’ve written the book!”

With his arm round her shoulder they looked down below
as the Moon bathed the Earth in a silvery glow.
In her cute alien ear then she heard his grim mutter;
“Here we are in the stars looking down at the gutter.”

We came out of Africa,
10,000 hominids
looking for a better place.
We travelled north and east and west,
always searching for somewhere
that we could call our very own.
We walked and ran,
we hunted and gathered,
we lived and died and had our being
until uncounted generations passed,
and then, praise be,
the world and everything
within, without, was ours!
But why, if this is so,
my modern band of squabbling brothers,
are men so different now?
Some black, some white,
some red, some yellow?
Some chance of peace!
With increasing childish rage
it seems some have forgotten that
we all came out of ‘Africa’
before it even had a name -
And that we came TOGETHER

By green and windblown rippled slopes
where cattle graze in summer sun;
beneath blue skies when larks sing shrill
and rabbits by the hedgerows run.
When meadowsweet and columbine
bedeck the lea like ocean foam;
we soft return like shadows lost
to seek our old ancestral home.

Within the tree-lined borderlands
we wait until the day is done;
‘til passing fancies leave us be
and once again our time is come.
When doors and gates are closed and locked
we slip within as night winds roam;
and talk in whispered secrecy
of times in our ancestral home.

No more within cold fireplace
do fallen logs burn bright and fair;
from panelled walls in sullen oils
dark portraits of the long-dead stare.
On bowing shelves of oak repose
forgotten tales in leathern tome;
unread by men for centuries,
hid deep in our ancestral home.

And through the marches of the night
we drift from room to balcony;
recalling days of childhood lost,
the laughter of sweet memory.
Yet all too soon we must be gone
‘ere birds again chorale the dawn;
and disappear like shadows soft
that fly from our ancestral home.

Dying day in late October
Gaunt the trees and stark the twilight
Crow and raven perch now sated
Worm now rises in his seeking
Fox and badger sniff the death scent
Here where salmon stream bends crooked
Spilling over moss-grown weir-side
Past the Roman Wall now broken
Down where altars lay forgotten
Came the young and mighty warlord
Sword in sheath like moonlight gleaming
Torque at neck like sunlight golden
Riding with his band of brothers
Hawk on wrist and hound at fetlock
Riding to his death at Camlann
Waiting were the painted foemen
Hid in ambush deep in forest
Blood-red now the river running
Stained with gore from many war-men
Lying slain in trampled bracken
Fallen are the leaves of autumn
Great oak weeps with tears of resin
Pierced where wayward arrow struck her
Shielded are her scattered acorns
Covered by the bodies tumbled

My ragged wings are black as night, my eyes are cold as sin;
the crows and rooks and magpies and the jays, my nearest kin.
I am a rogue and vagabond, I raid the nests of Man;
I’ll steal their golden trinkets and I’ll take whate’er I can.

Some fools have tried to trap me, and yet others have their guns,
but they who think me stupid little know what’s to be done.
Some others think to bribe me for to leave their crops alone;
I swoop in with my brothers and we take their kernels home!

To superstitious folks who see me perch upon their roof,
a new born babe will follow, for that is the Devil’s truth.
Yet down your chimney should I flit, beware the Reaper’s blade!
Within the year cold death shall come to master or to maid.

So look outside your window now and see what I may do,
If on the weather vane I sit, then rain shall come to you.
But if me and my brothers all do chatter, jack and caw,
then pray we are mistaken, for we tell of coming war.