On a village green

It’s spring
The balmy weather always threatens rain but
When the sun pierces it illuminates everything

No cricket here
Screw you, Major, with your myth of England
Wrapped in colonial, aristocratic entitlement

But the grass grows green
And I think of how this warm and contradictory public house
Is open to us all, from my inevitable privilege
To the council estate dwellers up the hill
This green is ours

We bask in the dwindling sunlight
In Brexit country, we defy and
bring the all together
Beyond our differences

A barn owl swoops over the Green
A reminder of what went before
Young Tegan and I relish its languid flight
And picture a future for this village green
That doesn’t depend on the myth of England