Copyright Edwin Graham – used under a Creative Commons licence.

I wrote this poem a week or so ago and shared it with a few friends. A couple of them wanted to pass it on to other people so I thought the best thing to do was to post it here.

It was inspired by the twitter feeds of a couple of farmers from the Somerset Levels whom I have been following on twitter: @SouthWestFarm and @westyeo, who have been having a terrible time.

On The Level

The sky is wearing a blue dress today
coming on all innocent, but she’s been
a grey fiend since the year turned
and we’ve borne the brunt of it.

Lying so low, the Levels used to be
managed land, now there are untended
consequences. We’ve broken
a thousand year promise of pasture.

The water-birds lost no time moving in
and if we were swan-keepers or gull-herds, we’d be in
our element. But now it’s time
to move the cattle out, to higher ground.

They wade up from the barn, their eyes turn
from trust to terror; below the surface is only
folly and drowned grazing. These last few weeks
have silted up our hearts to overflowing.