“I can hear the grass grow” The Move
I was born and raised in the industrial heartland of the North of England amid the noise and bustle of a large city. Every year we come here to the South West of France to spend a time in the quiet of the countryside.
We are surrounded by fields of sunflowers and acres of woodland. There are six houses in the hamlet and you can count on one hand the number of vehicles who pass by in a day. Gradually, you lose track of the hours of the day and then the days of the week. Back home, we live in an apartment and here we have a garden which has been left to it’s own devices for nine months. A kind neighbour occasionally cuts the weeds in garden and prevents it turning into a wilderness.
In a city the seasons can change unnoticed winter can slip into spring without raising an eyebrow. In rural France you begin to understand the subtly of nature, the nuances of change and the dependency the farmers have on the every changing weather.
The change in the seasons made me think of The Move, “I can hear the grass grow”. However, reading the poem back to myself I realise I have also written a metaphor for the every changing political landscape I left behind in the UK a few short weeks ago. The wind of change is blowing through our country and I find it invigorating and exciting. I watched Jeremy Corbyn’s speech at Glastonbury and was amazed at the size of the young crowd and you could almost see the growth in his political stature. It reminded me of a quote from the German Socialist Karl Leibknecht “He who has the youth has the future”
I can Hear the Grass Grow
The thunderstorm and the sun engineer a growth spurt in the garden
Neat and tidy the day before it is now unruly and unkempt
Strands of grass stand proud like the tufts of hair in a teenager’s beard
The garden is not square and has no clean straight borders
It’s surface is not flat but undulates like a Cotswold skyline
The garden is a mixture of lawn grass laced with weeds, borage and wild wheat
Unmolested by the mower giant thistles will dot the landscape like pylons
But it will be tamed and broken like a stallion it will not have its way
The mower is brought from its hiding place and begins its harvesting
White chalk stones surface like moles into the sunlight
Eviscerated into dust by the passing mower blade
I look up at the sky and see more rain clouds forming
The wind suddenly cools and the sun hides its warmth
Tomorrow will bring a new dawn and new growth
© Jeff Price June 2017