Listen to poem:
Woodland Jewellery Quarter
Come with me.
I’m telling you child,
In midsummer along the canal,
Industrial waters run still.
Tread softly and you may just hear
A hammering on tiny anvils -
A guild of workshops cut in miniature,
The secret unseen labour of the woodland jewellery quarter.
Child! Here, wrought iron branches of the hawthorn
Line the towpaths with clasps, hooks, and buckles,
Burnished by the soot-black beak of the raven.
Come child! Go peek under the bramble -
Seek the woodlouse in his apron of gunmetal leather
Polishing a cluster of cabochon blackberries
With his apprentice, the buff-tailed bumble.
Come with me, child!
See field mice fashion acorn cups into chalices,
Plated and silvered by moonlit splashes.
Hunched, eye huge through his jeweller’s loupe,
The toad crafts and cuts knots of amethyst lavender,
Heavy in the scent of summer.
Come child, come further along!
A short-clawed otter is panning for gold,
Glimmered reflections of the melting sun
To be passed to the badger for smelting,
And forging signet rings for the kings of old.
Child, be dazzled as the glazier dragonfly flashes by!
She snips fragments of light,
Soldering them into stained-glass windows for fairy cathedrals.
Come look, child!
Below in the hollow of a stump -
A loveliness of ladybirds enamel tin boxes
To hold trinkets of hope, and lockets for treasured memories.
Now listen, child,
For the frogs in their pearl-buttoned waistcoats,
Record a precision of pocket watch orders,
Fragile timepieces of dandelion clocks,
Worked by the blind mole in his escapement under the soil.
Child, I’m telling ya,
Here there are neither tickets nor tabs.
For in this workshop of this tiny world,
Everything is priceless.
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