And More Blue...

Close to the middle of Christchurch is Cranford St, where there is a shrinking area of market gardens in between the city and the outer suburbs.

I was thinking of this scene when I wrote the poem below. The sky was blue when I left home to get photos for this post, and it was blue after I took the photos and left - but while I was there, it was cloudy. So I've tweaked the blue up a bit in Photoshop. And I was thinking of a frostier day when I wrote the poem, and a farmer on his tractor rather than a few abandoned vegetable crates... other than that, I had a scene in my mind something like the photo.

The poem will be in the book "Flap: The Chook Book 2" soon to be forthcoming from my small poetry group, the Poetry Chooks.

For more blue photos, head here.

Winter Landscape

Farmer in a field digging onions,
skins the colour of old vellum,
the bulbs’ fat uncials a tracery of dried stalks
like capitals on an illuminated manuscript.
He stamps his feet on the frosty ground,
blows on his hands.

The plains stretch and stretch,
last tendrils of morning mist lifting
from rows of distant poplars
which his grandfather planted
to tether the sky, lest he go mad
from so much blue.