Peter Lilly: Poems

It’s not only in the colours and outlines of  the soft rounded hills and calabrese trees, and every possible variant of the colour green, under a grey sky. It’s also in the patterns of rust drawing maps on corrugated roofs of trackside farm buildings. It’s in the wells of deep hoof prints in black sodden earth surrounding a trough of water. It’s in the living fence-posts of moss-damp wood, and beacons of fresh-yellow timber where it has been recently mended. It’s in the crown-of-thorns birds-nest visible through naked limbs of a winter oak. It’s in the irregular circles of tiny yellow lichen on the unique fragments of our planet which make up ancient stone walls. It’s in the fragile chandeliers, of frosted spiders-webs that decorate an evergreen hedge. When I return,  I find my home in the details of Britain.  This poem was written in the autumn/winter of 2016, whilst I was visiting the UK.  Since moving to France, it feels like I...

Oh two leaf tree. Did somebody leave you behind? Ever expectant of the fruit You’re desperate to produce, But The ground around you is only Littered with the brown leaves of former glory, Last year’s windfall; now fertilizer And a fractured birdhouse, housing damp. Oh two leaf tree. Did somebody take your branches? Shaping your shadow to fit the outline of a tired summer, Saving your limbs to thaw a bitter frost, So The sundial has lost its strength, Derelict greenhouse fills with rain, Forgotten firewood now dampens sparks, But you can drink of this cold and feed your new limbs.. and grow. Written in the winter of 2007.