David Underdown

Hebden Bridge, Calderdale, West Yorkshire, UK

David Underdown’s poems have appeared in anthologies and journals including Assent, Bracken, Envoi, Live Canon, New Writing Scotland, The North, Wells Festival and Wenlock Festival. He has two collections published by Cinnamon, Time Lines (2011) and A Sense of North (2019) with a third planned for Spring 2022. Calder Valley Press will be publishing a pamphlet of his poems in the first half of next year. He is a poetry mentor for Cinnamon Press. Until last year he lived on the Isle of Arran where for seven years he was an organiser of the McLellan Poetry Competition. He now lives in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire.

Date completed: 14th November 2020

Journal: November 2020

So much death around the shires this year, 

as if the trees are bringing out their dead.

The wooded valleys bear their scars in monochrome

shedding their leaves long before the autumn parade.

Whole hedgerows put their bones on show

and though for some there is a passover, oaks and birch safe 

for now, almost every ash is marked for dying back. 

They say that eight of every ten will go.

So much death around the world this year,

and though there’s been a passover for most

we’ve had to learn to live apart and not to touch,

to conduct our love affairs on screens.

Our race brings out its dead in plastic shrouds 

to clutter landfill, turn the ocean currents blue.