Nature Poem from Cultural Thrift by Ashley Reaks and Joe Hakim

It’s the vast stillness of it,
the epic rolling green and brown,
the speckled rash of birds in the
distance and the rushing silence.
Here,
there is continuity and the
brutality of pure air
offset with the bitter-clean
aroma of fresh manure.
Trees are secured in fertile
soil, amid furtive teeming
multitudes of life that toil invisibly
around me.

It astounds me.

Terrifies me.

These lungs are used to sucking on
exhaust fumes and cigarettes.
The objects of my affections are
reflections in metal-shuttered
shop-fronts and the glow of
battered street-lights
caught in shatter-proof glass
bus-stops. My dreams are snagged
in sagging telephone lines,
my memories are red-brick
and terraced, as vivid as alleys
defaced by neon-coloured
spray-paint tags.
There,
my feet drag me home
night after night, manufactured,
captured and spent, as they tread
on relentlessly devoured ground.
I’m surrounded by the mating call of
Anlaby Road’s traffic.

That’s my natural habitat.

I guess I’m just built like that.

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