Farewell

Chapter 59: THE LIFE THAT’S UNDER THE GROUND

Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

About This Book

A varied collection of poems and short prose pieces that celebrate the Cotswold and Gloucestershire countryside while exploring love, longing, and spiritual yearning. The poems range from concise nature lyrics—observing rivers, hedges, birds, and seasonal light—to sonnets and free-verse meditations that ask for vision, joy, and fellowship. Several pieces foreground homesickness and the solace of ritual and local customs, others offer wry or reflective commentary on mortality, vanity, and daily life. Prose poems and songs intersperse formal verse, producing a sequence that alternates celebratory rural description, quiet grief, religious petition, and gentle humour.

THE LIFE THAT’S UNDER THE GROUND

It’s funny to think of the life that’s under the ground.

The mole that snouted up that loose red mound

Of earth; the worm that turned those worm-casts; now,

They are enough to pucker any man’s brow.

Once (I was only a boy) I caught a mole,

And he was angry, and bit a little hole

In the ball of my thumb. Worms I have often found,

Glow-worms, and ones like this that slithe around.

It’s funny to think of the life that’s under ground.