#amwriting #poem #poetry Fen - 12

Fen - 12

Mellow, misty, sort of grey, as tin' pears
in tinned cream, never quite enjoyed but
liked, so came the apple picking time.
Perhaps it wasn't so cut and dried.
For in prelude stubble was burnt away,
and when the wind was wrong, a stench
from the sugar factory pervaded smoke,
that sickened the nose and choked the throat,
and firemen battle untended blazes,
while departing gypsies rob unguarded homes.

Yet, when the winnowed wind caught perfume
in the orchard row, it dragged distended voices
calling from the children below, calling up
to old Jack, or their ring-less mother,
before they danced away to hide, like swifts.
Leaving only the almost of the twist
of ripe fruit, and somewhere, a woman singing.