Mistley has a magic place
where animals live in safety
while people wander they are here
not doomed nor deemed as tasty
Pigs who grew too fat in flats
a cow dried up from milking
Run down battered battery hens
now freed from dingy battery pens
to kick some dust and brightly feed
on pecks of children scattered seed
Nearly knacker yarded stallion Shires
tower to the sky
A tiny horse with just one eye
who begs the questions How and Why
Miniature malicious act ?
Stabbing unlucky stumble ?
pastures here to wonder in inspiring
to the humble
Do Not Feed The Horses
They May Bite
means not just you they
may back bite each other as some
still scramble for food
Rabbit World really exists
I saw the sign that told me so
Rabbits who have overbred
may be found hutches here instead
until they have a better place to go
Groups of goats who coped with pokes
and tethers in pokey places
now claim space to sit and sun their faces
or hit and run and butt
and bother goat neighbours
Sheep who keep their heads
down to the ground seem sure
in knowledge of sanctuary here
where food is all around
ponies vent in the sweet scent
of carrot studded grass and daises
Gaggles of geese disturb the peace
of ducks who quietly quack in puddles
or swim on a whim over swirls
to be seen where shoals of lake fish
have just been
Fancy that
there's a goat in a tree
just there sitting looking at me
then dip their ducky bills
at bits of food that are there still
as you can imagine
foxes like to make a nightly call
Two owls to hoot
guinea pigs guinea fowls to boot
though this time not for kicking
there really are three rheas here too
something that to me seems rare to
casually discover
so stand and stare and see what moves
or Moos
Cockerals that hobble a woolly sheep
that wobbles
Chinese plastic turkey faces
g-g-l-l-gobble
Look at this
around the corner must be twenty
black and shiny some of them are
really tiny
piglets in the straw
hard to say with all this hay
it really could be really more
I remember
in the paper
story of how they were found
roaming wide in Essex edges
Weeks to bring them all to ground
Black swan sitting mutely
children smiling cutely
acting to the backdrop
of the lakeside woodland mile
somewhere in the holly maze
there stands a tree of untold days
a massive oak that if it spoke
and we could see
breathes volumes of our history
another stalk of foreign seed
is starting to impress now
California stock with spongy bark
its redwood penetrates the canopy
and time goes by
Good job the tearoom has
good things to eat with puddings
you would go to school for A
panoply replete includes cuts of
bizarrely meat
as people rest their animaled feet
and every one served up a treat
Measurements exist outside inside
developer's minds on business lines
instead of pastures profitable private
gardens building plots and roads and more
and less
Pigs appear from doors of sheds
to snuffle in the evening sunshine
we raise a glass
a mug of tea
and CHEERS! to this chance to be free
A fellow called Mike deserves all thanks
his family and herds of helpers
without their graft and art and craft
this modern ark would just
not be
come and see the eggs they've laid
inside the ancient tractor
© Mark Shepherd