Storms

Trying to find the roman landscape,
meandering where nature rushes,
making sense of a landscape I know so well
but never observed; I read the names
and try them on my tongue.
I hold language in my power, and can name this land,
but I am too dictated to,
as I am twisted and turned
by the boundaries as old as time
yet etched by a minute to midnight hand,
bruises on the map.
Self-seeding, self-cleaning
the world wins when left alone -
the unnatural neatness of a gardened clearing
contrasts with the tangled mess of teasels
bending with the wind.
I lean into the storm and hear the name fly past.
If I should bend, what then?
If I should disappear like frozen frog,
or hibernate in messy pile
like cold-snap weather shocked hedgehog
would the bindweed and the ransomes overtake
or would a watchful gardener edge the lawn
and clear the path?
Another storm, another name; I do not hear the words this time,
I am protected, hat and hood
I am prepared,
and do not bend.

Susan Cartwright-Smith, February 2022