Coming late to the party

I've only just realised that it's National Poetry Writing Month, and Blip is encouraging us to put a poem alongside a photograph.  Here's my offering:

Running south under
The blue skies of spring
The train skims the fields of home.
And my heart rises as the
Blue of Southampton Water
Gives way to the green
And purple dyes of the Forest.

Blue water and green fields,
These call me home.
A sunlit stream
Edged with the swaying daffodil.
Then salted air and a creaming wake
As the stately liners
And the fussing tugs
Leave the cluttered dockland
For the open sea.

Blue water and then forest green.
A patchwork of fields,
Clumped cottages and a steeple
Pointing to the sky.
Black and purple avenues of pine,
And a flash of antlered brown
As a stag melts into the forest deeps.

Blue sky, green fields
And secret woodlands.
The frolic of new-born life
And the treasured glimpses
Of the wild and shy.
Once again hope rises within me
As the train moves swiftly
Through the changing and yet changeless
Beauty of a southern spring.

©Christine Barrett 2018.