Green Man

Notorious,
his face shown in many places,
he remains in the copses,
covering fences with brambles,
straggling bindweed on the wrecks
of burned out cars.

He sends dandelions
through motorway cracks,
struggling to hold summer’s root,
the first fist of snowdrops,
the catkins on January trees:
a fracturing of time that
is Spring in the shift of the earth.

He hunts with kingfishers,
their astonishing turquoise
with its rumour of fire.
Long body made of chalk,
he is balding and grinning.
Lives in the undergrowth,

amongst travellers smoke.
Dispossessed, in the hope
of white violets, corncrake
and cockle, the footsteps
of lovers.

A memory of churches
keeps ivy and sticks in his hair.
Birds use them to nest,
where lichen replaces
broken cracked glass.
In abandoned sheds
entangled in old man’s beard,
he waits for a quiet resurrection of leaves.

Available in The Shape of Us.