No caption necessary

.

...just because we like llamas:







... and here's a nice dog to herd them:

(thanks Munni)

After the Storm -- by Zephirine

The GU poetry blog is asking for poems about cities this week. If you don't feel reckless enough to post a poem on there, why not send one to me and I'll post it on here? This is the one I did:


The morning after the storm of 1987


Having to be somewhere
I set out early
and coming out of Regent’s Park tube
was astonished
not by the few uprooted trees
not by the absence of traffic
but by the air
the air
clean clean clean
fresh damp
fresh smelling of bruised leaves
smelling of broken branches
and earth
smelling of wet earth
the air of Country
I was seeing London
and smelling forest
walking the pavement
crossing the asphalt street
littered with twigs
and stray leaves
looking at office buildings
stucco frontages
brass plate front doors
feeling the damp breath
of woodland on my face
the grey rocky dirty exhaust-fumed city
swept clean
by some great green broom
despite the destruction
it was strangely wonderful

in all my time in this city
the morning that sticks in my mind
is when it became
city and country both


.