Nature's Song

Rereading my thoughts about the changing of the seasons last month reminded me of a poem I wrote twenty-odd years ago. It’s a poem I shared on the old website but it feels appropriate to share it again now. I wrote it whilst sitting in a park in Swindon in the Autumn, reveling in the smells and changing colours around me and thinking about my connection with the natural world. It was loosely inspired by the passage I mentioned in Revelation last month, coupled with the understanding that everything around us has been intimately affected by our fall but also, albeit imperfectly, unerringly magnifies the glory of its Creator. The poem’s a bit raw but I enjoy its rolling cadence.

Nature’s Song

So, sit and listen to the aspen as he speaks with rustling voice

Of wind’s tender kiss, her chilling breath

That flatters once, then threatens death

And magpie’s querulous, raucous cries

– Interspersed with chattered lies –

Puffing up his corvid pride

That all the other birds despise

Then squirrel’s questing, scrabbling, hoarding, twisting

Leaping, scratching, gnawing, fleeting dance of spring

That pirouettes to summers spent

Thieving from the picnic bench

Till autumn’s mist descends

To shroud a table stocked with kernels, nuts and cherries

And the finest, choicest berries

‘Fit enough for kings’

Or so the sparrow sings

As he huddles in his winter roost

Grumbling away the bitter frost

Heeding not a single thing

That is except for glorious spring

Trampling winter underfoot

With shouts of glee, it rides

Flinging colour here and there and everywhere

As far as magpie’s beady eyes can see

Then squirrel, curled up snugly in his drey

Blinks sleep from eyes and greets the day

With twitching nose and empty belly

Thin as a twig, he warily descends

Head up, ears pricked, eyes alert

He inches down the rutted bark

Of aspen, to the dew drenched dirt

Beneath the tree’s budding, spreading boughs

That reach and stretch and greet the fattening sun

With all the vim each creaking limb allows

Thus, aspen greets an orchestra of noise

As spring tells tales of levity, of freedom

Of laughter and of tears

Of the soul of life’s creation

Never changing through the years

That merges with all others

And soothes our deepest fears

For a moment then, as warm sun rises

Nature holds a breath

Aspen, squirrel, magpie, wind

All quieten

All wait

All listen

Until faintly at the edge of everything they hear

The song of heaven join earth’s gritty, tireless tune

As a choir of angels sings

‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty

Who was and who is and who is to come’