Rape

Even in my short span
of fifty years,
where once fields lay
there is today
a harvest of red brick,
brown window, green lawn,
conservatory,
and in springtime
pink flowering cherry.
Sometimes weeping.

And where once the April showers
stained the high-banked lanes
between the leaving trees,
bright buses
now run shadowless.

Beyond these newer boundaries
older ones have gone;
hedgerows neatly prised
away, with only toughest
trees still standing,
waiting for lightning.

It is a broader canvas
and, in April, brighter.
The fields take on a different shape
and colour. It is yellow.
It is rape.