There you are: lurking in plain sight not even at the bottom of my garden; the birds and squirrels know you and at night the fox will seek your shelter, dodge the moon. Shaggy, disregarded, a briar rose climbs through you and little cabbage whites, my brother once called fairies, flutter at your base; beneath our walls the tangle of your roots snakes and coils so slowly a century might pass. Centuries have passed since this was last a field where dancers circled, shadows in the grass, whom only poachers saw and all that told that they had been, their only residue those dark rings under the morning dew.
The ‘gentle bush’ is the hawthorn. This poem is reprinted with permission from Kathleen McPhilemy’s latest collection Back Country (Littoral Press, Lavenham 2022).