Beneath the skin of the city

its vital organs function:

not the ones you think I mean,

the staff whose manual actions

 

keep human beings hearty -

supplying power and food,

sweeping roads and pavements clean,

arresting fire or flood -

 

no, not those, I speak 

of parks and lawns and leaves,

of blossom flossed on trees like frost

that licence us to breathe:

 

the bluebell heads that peek 

through ribs of ancient woods,

the twilight fox, the midnight moths,

the moss, the worms, the weeds.