Rosy with cider

Apple growers find poor pickings after wet summer

The Guardian, 17 September 2012

It was the early hours when he’d filled his boots

and with numbed fingers pulled on overshoes

to take to the orchard, swaying down avenues

cutting a zig-zag between muddied ewes

with a Poetry Review held open in one hand,

giving shape with the other to wild declamations

of a half-dozen sonnets by Shapcott on bees

not to weep bees but to sing them into being.

Last year’s rich harvest fermenting within him

his head was buzzing and bee-friendly words

flew out into the night: woundwort and clover

and bee sage. A honeyed moon hung in the sky

multiplied sixfold through pollen-yellow eyes

soothing the histamine rage of his ruddy hives.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet