The Green Zone

Uncivil wars unending.

I need some peace.

Evacuate the building, the home front,

Start marching,

Escape the urban battleground,

Find the nearest green zone.

Open fields discover me.

Grassland, some wild, some like a mown carpet.

Blue sky, high clouds, distant hills.

Kestrel at a hover, grace with wings,

Sun burnishing its back.

Golden warmth on my face.

And then the sound of trees,

A shushing hushed whisper,

A million leaves in motion.

A sussuration,

Fills my ears.

At the margins, a pause.

Then slowly, through the tall portal alders

And into the woods.

Fulgent sun dapples the canopy.

Rays leak through leaves,

Speckled gold on the woodland floor.

Branches like open arms waving a welcome.

Trees in formation,

A hula troupe swaying in unison, hypnotic.

Distant traffic sounds murdered

By the peace keeper trees.

I see drilled woodpecker holes,

Nests unoccupied now.

One had been squatted by blue tits.

I see cat walks and rat runs,

Hear birds I can’t name or place.

I smell fecund life

And pungent death all around me.

I see no other human being.

Here in the centre of the woods,

Next to the sunk estates

Of my rusting home town,

Just a few hundred yards

From other home fronts,

I find my peace on earth.