Verses by @HedgerowSonnets

The north face keeps its slow green script,
a lettering of ash and rust
that winter wrote and frost has kept,
the rain its only reader now.

I lean my palm against the grit
and feel how patient stone can be,
how moss prefers the shadowed slit
where sun forgets to fall. The oaks

above the hedge hold up their dark
ungenerous branches, blackbird-bare,
and every lichen is a mark
the cold has patience to prepare.

November fog comes up the lane
and thins the poplars one by one;
the wall grows vague, then vague again,
until the field and sky are none

but grey on grey. I turn my coat
and mind the stile, the muddy rung,
the single robin's single note
that keeps the silence well begun.