Let the wild in

Weeds are jostling with each other in my overgrown garden.
Thigh high grasses knock stalks with straggling buttercups,
which shower yellow petals like scattered drops of sun.
Chest high umbellifers shake their lacy white nets.
Stands of furry nettles push their way through the press
among the pink and blue flowers of green alkanet.

Briars arcing everywhere stitch my initial distress:
I have not fought them once during two years of illness.
Their absolute triumph is a massive green mess:
with an astonishing, wholly unrestrained beauty,
so overwhelming, so totally free.

So enticing, because now all the lacewings and ladybirds,
hoverflies, butterflies, dragonflies and bees, by happy chance
are drawn here, where their busy dronings and hummings are heard
like a song about life; and their dippy movements look like a joyful dance.

The old, common cherry tree spreads across half the sky.
What a traffic through it of birds we all know,
my favourite, a blackbird, serenades from up high
while blue-tits, wood pigeons and jays come and go.
A rush of long tailed tits, swept on a current I can't see,
then a thrush, collared doves and others only glimpsed.
Their chatter, chirrups, gurglings and cheeps sound like glee.
I feel rooted in the moment, temporarily transfixed.

Along the fence where the climbing rose rampantly sprawls,
two wrens dip and peep, picking off tiny snacks.
I hold my breath. Why does the sight of them feed my soul?
Their exquisite little movements stop my heart in its tracks.
Then their liquid little songs, so fulsomely shrill,
call to some deeply buried place: 'Just be! Just be!'
I'm tugged out onto the step, with a heart piercing thrill.
I feel ready to shake off the malaise that's been shrouding me.

I suck a massive breath, try to take all of it in.
I want to absorb the wind, let it blow through my skin …

The evening sun warms the grassy bank beyond my back fence, where
a young fox sniffs the breeze with no awareness of me.
Silent and graceful as a cat, each paw placed with supreme care,
it climbs the bank to pause under the oldest beech tree.
Then it slips away into its small patch of town wood.
I feel inexplicably enriched, in a profoundly altered mood.

Suddenly it's obvious what I really need to heal.
My garden is a true haven since I let the wild in.
This is the first time for ages I've been able to feel.
All I need is to be a part of the seasons unfolding.

The joy in connecting to my natural surroundings
has sounded a resonance in my bass-line heartstrings.
Protecting the wild can't be a disconnected act of charity.
I've realised today I need the wild to save me.