From the vantage point of my ladder, I am free from the noise of the world

Poet and artist Frieda Hughes momentarily forgets her troubles as she looks across the expanse of the countryside

THE VIEW FROM HERE

The tulips have thrown up the green flags

Of their imminent arrival to warn of positioning

For ladder feet in a flowerbed. The muscari protrude,

Their arrows of tiny purples spearing the drop in temperature,

And the beginnings of the lilies froth,

Their clumps of green like tiny cowering hedgehogs.

Day after day as the sun prepares to plummet

Into the blaze of its own ending, I drill holes

Into the walls above their heads, and hammer in vine eyes

To wire the angles and inclines of every wall of the house

For crimson and lilac blankets of clematis and wisteria.

Two storeys up, my feet brushing the top of a wall-tied magnolia,

I am free from Trump tariffs, the Ukraine war, the Gaza Strip,

The collapsing billions of billionaires, the price of sugar,

And the downturn in the economy. All I hear are the birds

Skittering to bed, their calls more urgent as the sky purples

And the moon rises, as full as any sphere about to be eclipsed

By the shadow of the Earth. I see the sheep on the hillsides

On fire in the sunset, as my neighbours in their cars

And their vans, bring back their day, one by one.

The sun prepares to plummet (Frieda Hughes)

And the moon rises (Frieda Hughes)