Intimations
It may be no more than the blackbird
singing in a hawthorn bush - as if
he’d sung there forty years and never stopped -
the patch of reddened sorrel and dry grasses
running behind a broken wall, abandoned coppice,
or the weathered gateway to a paddock
humped now in tussocks and tall burdock –
edges of places, far up back lanes, offering
half glances into what? – to following
the margins of a stream, way-marked by willows
down a fold of land, to where it sinks
in a sump of bulrush and bright kingcups,
or of foraging the hedgerows, looking
for nests, wild fruit, gathering bunches
of shy flowers now protected by the Law?
And sometimes, coming through the strip
of woodland, there is a stile set in the fence
ahead, sunlight on open fields beyond,
the back-lit branches drawn aside like curtains
round a stage-set, picturing a promise
brighter than real life ever could fulfil.
Tony Lucas is retired from parish ministry but continues with work of editing and spiritual direction. His poetry has appeared widely on both sides of the Atlantic. Past collections, including Rufus at Ocean Beach (Stride/Carmelyon) and Unsettled Accounts (Stairwell Books’) remain available. He is a long-term resident of South London.
Amethyst Review 