Waiting for Spring in Grimescar Valley by Andrew Shephard

Waiting for Spring in Grimescar Valley

A deer scouts the wood fringe where

a laminated notice shouts, ‘It’s coming!’

Frozen still, every creature waits.

Buds hold tight, not daring to breathe.

Robin in military red -

a thrush rehearses a private song

while rooks conduct reconnaissance

disguised as twig movements.

Snowfall truce.

Hard ground hesitates to liquefy -

no squirrel springs to action,

no mole digs in mutinous excavation.

Tremor in the night -

heavy plant thunder

then landscape plundered

for trenches, drains and aggregate.

Frost delayed the advance.

Now thaw brings war to fields -

hedges ripped, stone walls breached,

outmanoeuvred creatures flee.

‘It’s coming! Find a new home,’

the posted notice said.

Only one side can win,

and that side, this year, is not Spring.

I wrote a poem, aged 17, about a housing estate being built over my favourite country walk. Fields have been lost to concrete all my life in the different places I have lived, and I have returned to the same subject with this poem. People need a roof over their heads, but I'm looking forward to the time when humans have a more balanced relationship with the planet we inhabit and with the other sentient creatures we share it with.