The Clocaenog Red Squirrel Trust has collaborated with eco-poet Diana Sanders to highlight the challenges facing Clocaenog’s endangered red squirrels through poetry. Eco-poetry blends creative expression with environmental activism, offering a powerful way to engage people with issues such as habitat loss, noise pollution, disease from grey squirrels, and the wider vulnerability of this rare Welsh species. Through these poems, Caro Collingwood (Red Squirrel Ranger) and Diana hope to inspire greater awareness and support for red squirrel conservation.
Each week we’ll be featuring one of the poems written in Diana’s workshop.
Searching by Pat Sumner
Clocaenog Forest, 2014
Inspired by the conservation work of the Clocaenog Red Squirrels Trust
Sweeping away midges with broad-brimmed hats
as sweat trickles and dirt clings,
they come to a jaded stop –
footsore, deflated –
swathed in deepest green,
no sky to guide them or hint of breeze.
“It’s no good; they’ve all gone. There are none left at all.”
Scratching brambles and bracken have taken their toll –
and the sting of nettle, and the giant
cross-stitch of fallen trunk and branch
that embroiders the forest floor.
Straining eyes and necks, again they scan
the high canopy, darned together tightly
by pine needle and web,
the scent of resin sticky in the air.
A thick tapestry of humidity entraps them –
and the coo of pigeon, chattering chip-chip
of crossbill, dull drone of bee.
“Look!” cries a volunteer.
A flash of bruised peach
plunges through a buttonhole of sky –
a single jay darting into secrecy.
“What about these?” asks another.
Cone scales lie scattered
on a tree root, satin-stitched with moss,
above the mustiness of loam.
“Squirrel!” they smile at last. “It’s got to be.”
The moment holds them –
and their indrawn breath,
skimming eyes, sudden pulse
of expectancy –
till an elongated streak of red
springs from tree to tree,
as if its mighty leaps
could extend dwindling time,
stretch out hope
and possibility.
