Red are plums and loganberries,
Bramble, port and damson jellies,
Hips and haws and juicy cherries.
Red is tasty.
Blue are chilly winter skies,
Hyacinths and jackdaws’ eyes,
Kingfishers and damselflies.
Blue is beauty.
Green are mosses, lichens, leaves,
Conker cases, mallard’s sheen,
Beetle-shine and salt-deep seas.
Green’s alive.
Gold is sunlight, evening lamplight,
Eyes of cats reflecting headlights,
Fishes-glitter, harvest moonlight.
Gold is riches.
Black is night-time, ravens, crows,
Elderberries, ink and sloes,
A witch’s pot and smoking coal.
Black is still.
Silver’s tinsel, glitter, metal,
Sparkling frost on stinging nettle,
Mirror’s glimmer, singing kettle.
Silver’s mine.
Rainbows bloom in petrol spill,
Hummingbirds and peacock quill,
Wings of flitting dragonfly,
Soapy bubbles in the sky.
Sunlit rainstorms, shower-shimmer,
Scattered light in every colour,
Rainbow arcing in the ether,
Gold to sky.
Jane Lovell is an award-winning British writer whose work focuses on our relationship with the planet and its wildlife. She has been widely published in journals and anthologies both in the UK and US and has recently won the Ginkgo Prize and the Rialto/RSPB Nature & Place Competition. Her essays have been published in Elementum Journal, Dark Mountain and The Clearing. The God of Lost Ways and This Tilting Earth are her latest eco-poetry publications.