Oh man, you have disturbed me with your scarlet shiny thing

Your throbbing lump of metal has made all the birds take wing

You’ve frightened off the peewit and disturbed the duck

The problem is, I think, that you just don’t give a fuck

As your pulsing red machine into my reserve you thrust

Do you even understand the concept of a Wildlife Trust?

But with all the Earth’s resources you must waste so you can fly

You can’t compete with lapwing as they dance across the sky

You must throb and pulse and roar just to get up off the ground

While the glorious rush of feathers is my darlings’ only sound

So now you’ve had your fun, go on, get off out my sight

And leave the sky to those who really have the gift of flight

And now I can hear the silence: their last sweet cries the only sound

Peace descends across the marsh as they flicker to the ground

There are aliens in my kettle

I’m all alone away from home

Another town, another B&B

A little island in a Poole of night

Lost in a world of strangers

My only friend a cup of tea

But there are aliens in the kettle here

I wonder what they want from me?

Singing of the distant stars

Telling me that only we alone

The wanderers, the ones who don’t belong

Can know of stranger things by far

No-one knows, nor ever will

The songs I hear in faceless rooms

In bland and boring towns I still

Know pathways out beyond the moon

And all alone I find my way

The kettle sings. It’s all ok.

This one is slightly tongue in cheek. The rhyming ones usually come out that way.

Peat, oh Peat is dark and deep
An ancient soul, the Earth asleep
With brooding mysteries of life to keep
Dark Peat, my soul is yours

While golden, glorious friends may stand
Shine light of truth across the land
All I can do is stain my hand
With Peat, whose soul is mine

Wild nature, lonely pure and free
An unsung hero most don’t see
His bleaker glories chime with me
Yes Peat, my soul is yours

While others shout and dance and sing
I love them for the change they bring
But run and hide with my dark king
For Peat, your soul is mine

The bright ones shine their glory high
And stand like statues ‘gainst the sky
No one loves us, Peat and I
But Peat, my soul is yours

Ignored, bereft and sore abused
The rich man’s plaything, raped and used
My soul, my life, my darkling muse
Peat-Earth, our soul is ours

https://www.rspb.org.uk/reserves-and-events/reserves-a-z/forsinard-flows/

I am on my way to the Flow Country. A vast area of blanket bog in the north of Scotland. Why? See the link above.

The meadow-lands are like a sister
Flower-dressed and merry dancing
Intricately known and loved
In all her moods and whimsies.

The uplands, crazy friends of childhood
They may have hit hard times of late
But always ready, freshly eager
To propose a new adventure

The heath, more like a friendship
Met now and then, a summer romance
Their sunkissed warm and sandy skin
Delightful to my feet of clay

But oh, those northern bogs beckon like
A dark entrancing stranger
Brooding over centuries forgot
Old heroism forgotten by our day

Dark peat may draw me into
Deeper mysteries of life
Enfold me in strong arms of ancient honour
Or suck me into unimagined depths

And yet I go, with beating heart
Forsaking my sweet dancing sister and old friends
Forgetting any future in the lighter lands
To venture out into the flow
And go to where it takes me

I’m sorry I’d invite you in, but
Outside a storm is raging
Friends are camped beside the door
Waving placards. They have nudged aside
The homeless who sat there before.

The hall echoes with an urgent need
A monstrous device of alien technology
Hangs there, blocking and yet amplifying
Scrambling thoughts into cacophony.

The blankets are all off the bed
Handed out to sundry passers-by.
Throughout lie scraps of words unformed
With scattered notes of meetings to which I
Arrived too late.

A parade costume lies all in a heap
Discarded like the summer trains I missed
Which pass by, shrieking. Creatures creep
Away and hide small heads in shame.
Dried grasses, unnamed summer flowers
Litter the table where the book of grasshoppers
Lies face down, silent. There are hours
Left unopened on the couch.

You can’t go in the kitchen: giant runner beans
Tap against the window, green tomatoes
Impaled upon their points. And gory scenes
Of unpicked blackberries smear the walls.

The view is gone – my beloved hills
Obscured by cloud that fills the room
With smoke of burning forests. And underneath it all
Somewhere in a corner, very small
And curled up with those creatures
I think you may find me.

Why am I clearing reeds
From an old, dry reservoir?
Breaking my back on a task
So big there is no horizon
Where the rhizomes twist and knot themselves
Against my puny force
And even the hands of all my friends
Will never make light work

Because I believe
One day cool waters will return
And birds I’ll never see will swim
And breed, and dragonflies
Will chase across the surface in the sun
The last few autumn swallows
Will catch their parting meal
And winter air will fill with piping calls
Of wigeon and the rush of wings

The task will never cease
The reeds themselves will stand
In other places, catch the wind,
The warblers and the sneaking snipe
Raise their velvet rods on high
And spread their woolly seed
And practice domination
In spite of me

But I will work on through
The golden light of afternoon
And piling clouds of change
With friends who fight beside me
In joy at lasting labour
In love of possibility
In hope of one more year of sunlight
Because we believe