Out of keeping

White winter morning.
You look across the river,
this ancient waterway,
and catch your breath.

Through barest branches
over open, shadowed, sunlit fields
there is an apparition: strange, and new,
not seen before: shining, cylindrical,
resplendent and forbidding.

You count six sparkling silos
stretched across the skyline,
and ask yourself
if these striking steel structures
are out of keeping with the landscape.

They are of course a product
of this farmed land - that’s ploughed,
then sowed, then harvested.
And more, they are a home
for gathered grain.

In keeping then, these bright,
metallic, man-made guardians
of the very food we grow:
a part of rural life as much
as fields, and trees and waterways.

Look once again.  The silos glisten.
In the winter sun, they send a signal:
it is time to look afresh, to think,
and listen.


Tuesday, 21 February 2017