Walking with Gilbert White by Barbara Cumbers

 


 

Barbara Cumbers is a retired information officer and part-time lecturer in geology. She has had poems published widely in magazines and anthologies. Her first collection, A gap in the rain, was published by Indigo Dreams in 2016. She is currently working on a collection of poems about the Shetland Isles where she had a month’s residency in 2018.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Walking with Gilbert White

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course one walk can’t be enough – it must

be many walks along the same route, slow

 

over seasons and years, and many times of day.

I love the leisure of it, the unhurried thoroughness,

 

the way he calls me to pause at a dunnock’s song

noting the date it rose high in the hawthorn

 

from skulking in undergrowth, how long

it sings there. He urges me to check

 

when the first swallow comes, how it might pass

unnoticed among pipits and larks, how low

 

or high it flies, and at what time. He asks

if it came before or after the martins

 

this year, or last. He is so perceptive

it shames me. I make my scanty notes.

 

He nods and smiles, points out gently

how much more there is – the seven types of bee

 

that pollinate the brambles, how cold and rain

hold back the willowherb, the variety of flies

 

that bother horses, their metallic sheen. Look,

he says in my garden, a few of the ladybirds

 

are black with two red spots. Make a note

how many — we’ll check for more next year.

 

 

Barbara Cumbers

 

 

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