Three poems
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By Jane Lovell
Reasons for Sanderlings
Their presence in winter
defines land that Sea will claim.
Imagine its rising swell submerging
banks of shingle, swilling through marram grass
and samphire, bursts of stonecrop and campion,
and you gliding like a seal below the surface
past looming ghosts of groynes and jetties,
sunken harbours.
The water will be clear
and tinted with a curious green light.
Make your shelter on high ground.
Take note of the movement of stars,
the distance and position of the moon.
Take note of the tides.
Find sustenance in sea kale and buckthorn,
dulse and kelp.
In the scurry of waves across grassland,
the sanderlings will guide you, show you
how to hunt for burrowing crustacean,
isopods and plankton.
Their plumage will remind you of snow.
You won't be able to explain snow
to your children, that silence on waking,
the crump under your feet on a blue day.
Or frost on a window. Or flying above cloud.
Their skies will be clean. Flight, to them,
will mean only bird or blown seed,
the hum of dredgers along the coast
their only knowledge of engines.
From cliff tops, they will worship the wind.
We hold their future like a sphere of thinnest glass.
Tilt and hold; watch how the sanderlings
sweep in to land, the long dark stored
in the beads of their eyes,
their curves stolen from shadowed moons,
their spirit from the spume of tides.
They have learned to skip aside from the debris
clinging to the beaches.
They are here to remind us we cannot fly.
Deciphering the Woodlouse
After many years of research
out in the field and in the lab,
using data gleaned from
pheromones and enzymes,
antennal tilt and tremor,
the thrum and shiver of thoracic somites,
we have deciphered the communications
of a woodlouse.
He speaks of leaf matter, mycelium
and the frosty light of dawn; of his need
for damp retreats, and the creeping dryness
and heat prophesied by the elders;
of the poisons sucked through hyphae
up into the lofty heights of trees, that tang
in rotted leaves, in the curled twists
of those corrupted by their toxins;
of the great earthquakes and seas of liquid rock
that weight the ground, that halt
the weave and creep of worm and beetle,
frog and vole;
of the taste of rain, the smart of it,
its memory of oil.
He speaks the histories of earth and soil,
notes that he's alone but shows no grief.
We write our observations, analyse the data
while he hides beneath his stone.
We mulch his leaves, ensure that he survives.
We still have much to learn.
Once there were tigers
Your atoms came from stars,
carbon and nitrogen, oxygen from the blast
of a stellar inferno,
so too your timelessness,
or so you thought.
Your movement from heat and storm
is so slow
that on the great maps
you have become a thin, unsteady line
– almost invisible
but for the dead you drag in your wake:
hulks of whales bleached with salt,
caravans of elephants, disfigured rhino,
lemurs, bats and turtles,
tides of insects you have poisoned,
wingless birds
beaks fixed wide
tongues shrivelled to wire.
Once a frantic, teeming infestation,
you have become sick and ponderous,
the flutes of your bones catch the winds
that sweep the planet,
its twisted trees, the brume of dust.
Once there were tigers, triumphant as flags,
their hefty paws pressing down on the Earth,
anchoring its certainty,
now they are just echoes in the solar winds,
striations roaring in space
chased by ghosts of birds.
On a calm night, you'll hear their calls.
On a long wind, sometimes, a darker sound:
the strange piping of loss.
Winner of the Ginkgo Prize, Jane Lovell explores our connection with the natural world – its beauty, fragility and resilience. Her latest poetry collection is Tipping Point (Night River Wood 2025). Jane has also written for Dark Mountain, The Clearing, Elementum Journal and Photographers Against Wildlife Crime. She lives in North Devon on the edge of the Valley of Rocks. More information can be found at https://janelovellpoetry.co.uk.