Flying ant day by Tim Relf

Flying ant day

Imagine if we could always get better –

by which I mean eternally heal. If nothing, ever, was ever

any graver than a tickly cough or a graze needing a dob of Savlon.

I’m talking absolutely nothing from which one couldn’t recover –

one could simply brush it all off and live, live. Imagine:

watching an oak tree grow and fail and fall; watching one’s descendants reach

four hundred and twenty one; watching churches, Gods and religions crumble,

then evolve again.

Would you choose that? I wouldn’t. I’d take this every time:

this concrete and cut-grass rush

this dizzy flight from the soil

this one July day.

Tim Relf’s work has appeared in such titles as The Rialto, Under the Radar, Banshee, Acumen, The Spectator, The London Magazine, Bad Lilies, Stand, The Frogmore Papers and The Friday Poem. His most recent novel, published by Penguin, has been translated into more than 20 languages. He was 2023 poet-in-residence at Leicester Botanic Garden.