Jean Atkin, Press Officer for DGAA and a talented poet in her own right has just won Dartington Hall Ways With Words poetry competition with a very charming poem called 'Coppice' .
Congratualtions Jean, a very worthy winner.
Coppice
How the swifts’ wings bisected the blue
above the coppice wood -
so sudden shade was first a lack
of speed and height and flight.
Our pupils dilated, our skins cooled.
Our ankles were feathered in dog’s mercury.
I bent, touched sheets of stitchwort, violet, woodruff,
how they were shot with indigo, the warp and weft of bluebell.
How you relaxed, and smiled, and with your finger
smoothed the slowly easing corrugation that
was greening on a hazel leaf,
and told me how coppice cut
and grown and cut in every generation,
can live forever.
Jean Atkin
Kohi Forest, Auckland, New Zealand
6 days ago
