The notes for this poem started as a continuing requiem for the loss of the trees in the car park of my local swimming pool, but I was soon deflected from such sombre thoughts by recalling the tone of amazed disbelief that Toni used when telling me that he had killed a mosquito defiantly flying around the bedroom.  I suppose that it was inevitable that his sense of outrage that such creatures would be alive and biting in early March would make its way into my writing!
          There is part of me that thinks that I should be bewailing the destruction of the mass of vegetation that is rapidly being written out of memory, but that dead mosquito was much more powerful!

Early March

The pages in my notebook

stutter in a wayward breeze

that soon will cough to calm.

I do not need a coat.

And when the air is still,

the sun is hot.

My shins are prickling beneath

my jeans.  My spectacles have

darkened, and yet still I

squint against the light.

On such a day it comes as

no surprise to hear that

the mosquito first to taste

his blood, Toni has killed.

The season’s first,

of many yet to die.

So, protocols of summer

will be engaged:

all doors and windows

must be closed and hearing

tweaked to catch the

threatening buzz.

And we’ll be under siege

again, with all too many gaps

in our defence that let

the tiny ‘tigers’ in.

Eventually, in later months

(and battle scarred)

we’ll go into the cold –

and wish our enemies

were back again.

I feel that it is more than coincidence that the Killing of the First Mosquito of the Season coincided with my first real sunbathe of the year.  Life, as is obvious, is a constant balance between what you want and what you have to pay for it!

Remains

I continue to feel a real sense of loss at the departure of the 20 trees that were in the car park of my local swimming pool.  I wrote a poem a couple of days ago about my first reaction in 'Gone' and thought that would be it.  But it isn't.
          I think part of my resentment is based on the fact that not only have they cut down all those trees, but also the car park is going to be closed for the next month at least while they do something or other to it.  Parking is not easy in this area and the loss of the car park makes the situation very much worse.  So bad indeed that I may have to bring my bike out of retirement!  Now that is something.
          So, no trees and I will have to make an extra effort to go for my daily swim!  Such emotions are well worth an extra poem.  Which is what follows.
          I am bemused by the fact that, with the size of the lorry that they had, they have been unable to take away all the vegetation and some is left looking like bonfires waiting for the match!  There is also a certain amount of peripheral discusion/work/consultation going on and an amazing ballet of now-you-see-them-now-you-don't with the workers themselves.
          I hate the fact that the trees have gone and I feel that the ecology of the area of the centre has already been changed.  As I say in the poem,
Earth newly turned,
wind dries to dust,
already blown, unhindered,
through the empty space
It's as though I can see a new Dust Bowl being created in local centre before my very eyes!
          I felt that there was something very modern about seeing one workman on his phone with his back to the 'fresh, dead wood' and for a moment I saw a sort of television report of an incident where most of the action was concerned with media reporting the incident than the incident itself.  We live in a world where the selfie is seen an ordinary affirmation of reality rather than a very odd take on it indeed!  A sort of concept where nothing is real until you have taken a photo of it and put it all on social media.
          Anyway, all these ideas were in my head when I wrote this.  And I have an uneasy feeling that this latest addition to the 'Winter trees' sequence on this particular aspect will not be the last!

Winter trees

iii.     Remains                     

Earth newly turned,

wind dries to dust,

already blown, unhindered,

through the empty space

that once was filled

by what’s been cut away.

Some debris stubbornly remains

in incoherent heaps like

smashed, discarded toys,

with odd appendages

still reaching out,

untwitching,

in uneasy air.

The men who dug

are all engaged

in other tasks

around the edge

of that new waste.

One’s turned his back

on fresh, dead wood,

and on his phone

completes a modern scene

by foregrounding Facebook

and dancing thumbs.

While what is real   

lies just beyond the screen

soon to be cleared.

As I said with 'Gone' I am not sure that the numbers will remain the same when the sequence is edited and finished, but this is work in progress and it will do for now.