A Vision by Kathryn Bevis

 


 

Kathryn Bevis is Hampshire Poet Laureate and founder of The Writing School in Winchester.
In 2019 she won the Poets and Players and Against the Grain competitions, and was also shortlisted for the Nine Arches Primers scheme. She is working towards her first collection.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Vision

 

for the Reverend Gilbert White

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The forest is alive today

and quick with wild devotion.

Bees hum, drunk on puffs

of pollen, censer-swung

from meadowsweet

and Queen Anne’s lace.

 

Ferns stir themselves

to nod and bow; they sail

a summer breeze. Open-handed

to the sun, each pair of leaves

is a single prayer in a reef

of fractal-patterned green.

 

Damselflies flash and dart,

a fever of electric grace.

In the shade a foal gazes,

still as any seer;

her flanks are polished silver,

her tail an aspergillum.    

 

The body of a world

at worship cries out

to be seen. The beech leaves

whisper in a psalm

to everything that flickers,

foams and gleams.

 

 

 

Kathryn Bevis

 

Kathryn Bevis, Hampshire Poet 2020, was commissioned by Winchester Poetry Festival and Hampshire Cultural Trust to write this poem in celebration of the 300th anniversary of Gilbert White’s birth.

 

   

Devil Day by Kathryn Bevis

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