They’ve thinned out the woods round Balloch Castle <br />Pulled all the rhododendrons out <br />The forest floor looks bare and decongested <br />More natural, but not as I recall it. <br />Once, such dense undergrowth <br />A jungle of paths to be carved with your stick <br />Imposing yet alluring <br />Magical. <br /> <br />Now the conservationists laws reshape <br />And dictate, to allow the return of the natural fauna <br />While the grey squirrel thrives by the broad Scottish pines <br />And the red squirrel pines for sanctuary <br />If I compare them to the Black woods of my youth <br />They will never reach that stature in my time <br />The Black woods where you disappeared <br />Barely twenty yards in but swallowed whole <br />No wind, and only the occasional daub of dappled highlighting <br />Where hide and seek was futile, with every path <br />Littered with snapping twigs and always <br />The promise or threat of the deer or stag. <br /> <br />Somewhere there are two shoe-boxes <br />Filled with dried ferns and pine cones <br />One is in someone’s loft <br />The other’s in my mind.<br /><br />Danny Reynolds<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/008-wake-up-and-smell-the-heather/
