I don’t suppose these giant orange poppies are indigenous to the UK, and I certainly can’t imagine they grew in the Forest of Arden, which once surrounded the area where the photo was taken.
Even so, the straggling clump by the gate of this traditional thatched cottage was utterly glorious and deserved a better photo than I could manage with my phone.
This morning when I went out I had my camera with me:
Alternatively, Happy (lunar) New Year.
And a fragment of a poem, which at least has sheep tracks if not the animals themselves:
I’ve walked the sheeptracks of your dreams
in search of unicorns, but they have fled.
Now they graze where honey flows in streams
through pillowing hills.
Though perhaps it should be goats not sheep in the photo, and Chinese dragons not unicorns in the poem.
Three – four – nine – two; three – one:
random magpies map my life
in black and white.
Bonfire night:
the wide-eyed moon looks down
on multi-coloured stars
silver
ripple and pause
squirrel
squirrel
nibble and paws
silver
*(Alternatively: “palate of greys”)
don't confuse the narrator 