Overgrowth

Overgrowth

Where fields were
an industrial estate
is seeding
like wild grass,
avaricious as
a speculator,
eating, omnivorously,
both land
and creatures.

Plant replaces plant,
like for like,
tower cranes
swaying like stamens,
snooping in the
undergrowth
for the sabotage
of badgers,
as hedgehogs
and battalions
of moles form
an unlikely alliance
of blind resistance.

The horizon is as flat
as an empty sack,
the earth,fluid
as a river,
isolated trees like
languid giraffes grazing.
The sky is a
blank stare
devoid of light
and, in the distance,
taut as treacle,
the sea.

Factories are things
the neglected soil
failed to think of,
fresh as they are
to this slow landscape.
It was only, it seems,
when the momentary
things called men,
lethal as love,
considered manufacture,
rising girders
glowed with rain,
roads tarred,
assured of new traffic
tailgating through
the overgrowth.