on Lindow Moss

poems and puppets from a workshop at Wilmslow Library as part of the Discover Lindow Festival

 

Wandering on Lindow where the Common meets the Moss, where tree gives way to peat, where canopy becomes open sky, we look around and see

 

Beautiful, a butterfly like a bird, flies

Under the tree, knowing it is

Time for dinner, flying through

Tree trunks, like an

Elephant's loopy trunk, and there -

Rabbits ahoy!

Flying low, looking for flowers,

Leaves all around, but one flower bright as a

Yellow banana

 

and we enjoy the butterfly's seeking flight, fluttering through the trees and out onto the grass

 

Rabbits run from the Fox,

All the way to the field

Bouncing to a hole

But bouncing over the hole

In and out, dodging, dashing, running,

Trying to survive

 

We watch the rabbits run, trying to tell them that we are not foxes, not dangers but friends. They do not listen. Then, on a stone, warmed by the sun and dreaming quiet, reptile dreams,  we find a wonder, a rare and marvellous moment

 

Sliding through the forest,

Never stopping hunting,
Always catching prey,

Killing with his fangs,

Everyone runs away.

 

Or so they say! We don't run. We watch! How beautiful is the adder on his stone.

 

A shadow flickers over the grass and makes us look up

 

Speedning and darting,

Powerful predator,

Acrobatic.

Run!

Run!

Out come the talons,

Woe to the prey.

Handsome carnivore,

Amazingly quick,

Watching for prey, before the

Kill!

 

And quietly, we walk back to the path and our everyday world.  We head home knowing that there is a wonderful, wild world there, just over there, past the fence, through the gate, on the edge of our safe human world.

 

With many thanks to the Discover Lindow team 

and the wonderful folk at Wilmslow Library

But most of all to our team of young poets and puppeteers