This year’s Blaikley Salver poetry competition, on the theme ‘My Green Heart’, was won by Sheila Allen of Roche Rockers WI.
In case you weren’t at today’s Annual Council Meeting and missed hearing Sheila receite her prize-winning poem, we publish it here:
My Green Heart
The forest wakes from slumber in multi shades of green
The urgent calls of Springtime are plainly heard and seen
I shall wile away the hours so happy and so free
In my small green oasis beneath the old pear tree
I sprawl beneath the canopy among the daisies small
And read and doze and dream awhile as nettles grow so tall
For I’m a lazy gardener as anyone can see
No time for flowers in lines so straight
Or endless work from noon to night
I’m at the height of fashion; it cheers my green heart so
For the radio and telly say it’s the way to go
The butterflies need nettles to lay their eggs upon
My garden’s full of busy bees and birds burst into song
I watch the hedgehog scurry towards my broken shed
And a cheeky robin rules the world from my honeysuckle hedge
Yes, I’m a lazy gardener as my friends will all agree
But there really is a joy you know in nature wild and free
So leave a weedy corner and let the bushes grow
You will help so many creatures in wind and rain and snow
Let our green hearts keep on beating, it’s upside down but true
Do you think there’s just a chance my friends this could appeal to YOU
I do hope so – let’s all walk just a little on the wild side.