Burntstump Country Park, Notts
First Published in Wales Haiku Journal Autumn 2020.
I’d alter it slightly if I were submitting it now, but always feel that once they are released into the world I shouldn’t tinker.
As published, it was about a third of its original length, the rest dwelling on the decline of great country houses after the Great War. I suppose a lot of poems have a similar back story. The pond in the pictures is the pond I write about, though the yellow flags are just out of the picture. I may have done this one in the blog before – sorry if that is the case.
What the Water Sees
At the end of the woodland path a pond waits in the sunlight. It has been there for a century and a half.
Purple-flowered rhododendrons tumble down one bank, doubled by their reflection in the water. Today it is quiet, disturbed only by birdsong and the movement of water voles. It is a different place at weekends. Parents and dog owners shatter the peace with their yelling and the ducks are pelted with volleys of bread.
The pond remains unchanged. The scent of wild garlic drifts from the woods and a moorhen fusses round a stand of yellow flags.
a place in history
the shape of a vole
in water
Burnt Stump Country Park
One of my favorite poems you wrote, Simon. I see the yellow flag irises in background behind the tree, too.
If I were taking the photo again I would make sure they showed better.
I like both the poem and the illustration.
Voles have a different place in our thinking as a “good vole year” means that there are plenty of them about for hen harriers to eat.
We all have our place in the world. The vole’s place is very often inside a Hen Harrier. That’s just the luck of the draw.
Here the vole, mouse or pocket gopher can end up in a gopher snake. My adventures from the other day here, from my journal.
“Our morning’s excitement consisted of Rick finding a roughly 2 ½ foot long Pacific Gopher Snake caught in the birdnetting around his patch of peppers and tomatoes. Rick thought the snake had expired, but I went out to look. Upon investigation, the snake was unable to move, he was so bound up, but touching his snout got a response, so I took the scissors and carefully cut the net away, freeing the head last. He appeared relatively unharmed except for being in the sun. There was an expanded section on his body in the middle of the snake where it looked like a rodent meal was being processed. If this big boy has been patrolling the garden it is no surprise I have not seen many vole holes. Pocket gophers will build their mounds, then plug the tunnel entrances from below with dirt, sealing the holes. Voles and mice take no such precautions I am aware of, and snakes can readily follow them down their holes. I put him in a cardboard box in the shade to recover, from where he inspected me with his red-brown eyes, and flicked his dark brown tongue many times, sampling the air. I took him to the edge of the woods, where he slithered out of the box, and on into the wooded area.”
Thanks for that Lavinia – a lovely piece of nature writing. Though we have a few snakes in UK we generally don’t see them. Also a reflection about life – we all have our place in life, even if it is as food for something else.
I’m with Derek. And how I would like to see a vole in the water. I don’t think we have water voles here. At least I have never seen or heard of them.
They are pleasant little things but esy prey for rats and mink (which are escapees from farms, not a native animal.
Quite wonderful. The doubling by reflection is a good touch
Thank you Derrick. 🙂