Silent subversives

 Silent subversives 

Here’s half a dozen sunflowers 

tall in a fallow field 

have made me smile and raise a cheer. 

Hurrah for the gatecrashers, random, rogue

and accidental cosmos, shocking pink  

colonising onion rows. 

Whilst you might sow and coddle and tend

watchful for enemies out to destroy

for wind and drought and heat and cold 

and often as not your crop won’t grow

beans fail to run, flowers not show

see there on the wall all barren and dry

a rampage of passion flowers has taken root

scrambled and climbed and curtained the wall 

concrete now green, leaf, flower and fruit

somehow sustained in a dusting of dirt

making me smile and raise a cheer- 

three cheers for the triumph the random success

for nature not bounded, out of hand 

silent subversives running wild. 

Hounoux, July 22nd 2021 

Superhumans as they pass

 Super humans as they pass 

Saturday sun is early hot and rising 

stuns the valley golden green 

only the electric crickets ticking. 

But here’s the caravan advancing 

brouhaha and razzmatazz 

and through binoculars the combatants

rider blended into bike 

extraordinary striving 

grind of the day not yet begun

all ahead the foothills rising 

then the mountains floating blue.  

Through the glorious glowing landscape 

super humans as they pass. 

July 11th 2021 Hounoux.