Nettles
 
By tumbled walls, from rubble piles and round
all the apocryphal dens and rotting logs
of childhood, in the profane and holy
thick of things, they spring –
 
electric, tense to the leathery green
tips of their upholstered wings,
a bristling ring of ragged
seraphim in a last-ditch stand.
 
Live wires – no leisure for more
than a perfunctory fuse of bloom,
they stick together in a pungent, fresh
fury of belief, their flex of stalks
 
sparking static: each alert
and single, every leaf’s
sawteeth cut clear from
the green backcloth.
 
­­I've always liked them – not just for the sharp
respect they inspire, but because they seem
galvanized in the defence of some
frail underside of innocence.

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