Freston Wood
There is a faint smell of smoke Coming from the row of cottages Whose gardens end at the wood’s edge: It masks the scent of the bluebells. To savour their delicacy and the Pungency of the white blaze of ramsons Creeping up the wood from the Damper soil close to the brook We should have come late or very early. No matter, the sight is enough: Vast drifts of bluebells hugging The contours of this up and down wood, Purple under canopies of new leaves, Almost lilac where the bright sun Spangles and shafts through to the ground. We pass two elderly ladies who talk As if in a vaulted cathedral and All around there is birdsong, Of nightingales unseen in a thicket, Chiffchaff, willow warbler and a great Spotted woodpecker echoing on a dead bough. Here there is a sense of what it means To be English, part of a vast continuity That also embraces the concrete pillars Of a distant Orwell bridge Scuttling with scarab traffic and the Tall monumental and twisted trunks Of the oaks, and the bluebells, The overwhelming presence of the bluebells, Drifting deep into the memory. Richard Stewart Back to My Suffolk, Your Suffolk >