The winter struggle…

Winter creeps across the land
where mighty oaks and birch trees stand
and insects hid beneath the ground
face certain death if they are found
by mice or rats…and foxes too
nature’s food chain survival glue.

But up above the canopy
buzzards hunt by two or three
they square the ground on high patrol
in search of rabbit or tasty vole
life’s bitter struggle is borne this way
the same tomorrow as yesterday.

And as the winter creep moves on
the weakest creatures now all gone
rats and rabbits…mice and voles
bed down for winter in food-stocked holes
yet o’er the land where we draw breath
there’s barely sign of this fight with death.

 

©Joe Wilson – The winter struggle…2015

 

All His children…

 

He leaves the village and takes his bow

and soon in silence his prey he’ll know

he’ll kill a boar and his family is fed

life in the margins is that or be dead.

He’ll cut the beast down the centre line

give half to his neighbour, he is that kind

this is their way, these people are fair

with their neighbours and friends they always share.

But let us not forget the soul of the boar

He reached into its heart and his then did soar

the beast served its purpose, fed people, went rotten

its soul though was pure, and by Him, not forgotten

©Joe Wilson – All His children… 2014

The slaughtered…

I could not

 

Whoever would fire a bullet?
I ask as I’m surely confused
Who on Earth would want to shatter
All that beauty that Nature has fused!

Who sits in a hide away from the light
Waiting for the deer to call
They don’t need the meat, that’s not the treat
It’s the head and the points on the wall!

Tribesmen in ‘less civilised’ countries
Might hunt down just such a deer
Then they pray for the soul of the slaughtered
For life-saving food from a beast they revere!

Not for them the revulsion of trophies
They only kill what they need
But in our ‘so civilised’ society
We can kill just for pleasure or greed.

There is something not right in society
Where solutions come from a gun
Weapons should be just for protection
They should never be used for such ‘fun’.

“Please do not be offended by my reference to a ‘less civilised’ society. I refer only to a lack of modernity and in actuality we are the far more crudely behaved frequently” Joe Wilson 2014

 

©Joe Wilson – The slaughtered… 2014

The shot…

David Ware
David Ware

 

I was lying in ambush being totally still
When the red deer wandered into the glade
A handsome young buck about three years old
With fine youthful antlers he proudly displayed.

He was among a few other young juvenile deer
But he was clearly the one that stood out
And in a few years time at the annual rut
He’d be a new leader I’d got no doubt.

He already stood with that majestic stance
On his antlers the rights showed fine bearing
And when the others trotted with him for company
It was almost a smile he was wearing.

But he was mine now and I’d earned him well
I’d waited for him the whole of the night
And there in the centre of my reticule
He was standing alone in full sight.

I was fully prepared for what I was to do
My kit all in camouflage as was I
And just at the moment the young buck looked up
I shot and caught him in his perfect eye.

The slight sound from my camera spooked him
In a flash he vanished into thin air
But when I looked at the screen on the camera
His image was noble and was there.

It is ten years now since I shot him
And a fine leader he went on to be
I sometimes catch sight of him up on the hill
And just for a while he’s looking at me.

 

©Joe Wilson – The shot… 2014

 

The long sad look…

He cast a long sad look along the horizon
And gazed down on the planet’s Armageddon
For man was battling on to it’s destruction
Destroying all that fell in their path.

Placing man on the Earth had been troublesome
But the intellect of man had given Him hope
They could work out the problems that beset them
Yet all the killing and shooting and bombing had to stop.

He’d placed races of differing hue and different creed
Putting them in all manner of places far and wide
But man’s warlike nature seemed reason enough
For them to find their excuses for genocide.

What was it with the homo-sapien class of mammal
That had them at each other’s oft exposed throats
It was not the result of something that He had created
But a flaw that was in the essence of man.

©Joe Wilson – The long sad look…2014