Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

 
Their radios inform the Japanese
  each day of the position of the tide
  of cherryblossom flowing nationwide
to reach the northernmost still-naked trees.

Formosa first, close to the tropic zone,  
  and then the island chain of Byakyu
  to Kyashu, Shikoku and Honshu,
Hokkaido, then scattered stepping stones.

The Japanese prepare their picnic food
  and shake out coloured picnic cloths to spread
  beneath the cherry trees, where they are fed
on fragrance, beauty and a sense of god.

Shinto is pantheistic but wise men  
  consider god inhabits human minds:
  the Heart of Heaven dwells in humankind
and feeds on nature underneath the sun.

Bee-loosened petals fall into the tea
  as people chatter in light-patterned shade,
  and all the bright new things that are self-made 
delight them on their ceremonial spree.

                                                *

If England were Japan,
  the BBC would tell us that the foaming tide of May,
  now north of Watford, crossed the Trent today,
and sea-bent hawthorns bloom at Enderby.

The Spring tsunami, thoroughly benign,   
  progresses by unbroken waves of hedges  
  and tows green seas all frothy at the edges,
then climbs the Pennines to their plimsoll line.

The blossom reaches Tyneside, creamy white;
  it flowers on Newcastle’s wide town moor,
  and clings to cliffs on England’s north-east shore:
whiter than whirling kittiwakes in flight. 

It’s overtaken Alston, Allendale 
  and Blanchland; it wept petals at Tow Law. 
  (What is that stark abandoned village for?)
It’s flooded Otterburn and Holy Isle.

On Lindisfarne there is an avenue 
  of hawthorn trees that lean towards the land 
  at forty-five degrees, yet they still stand:
a parallelogram the cows browse through.

In Paradise I hope to sit again  
  to finish off the drawing I began 
  within those trees before I upped and ran
away to London to oblige my man.

Now jackdaws on the Roman wall declare 
  high tide has breached old Hadrian’s defences 
  and flows through Scotland! I come to my senses
and stop; I am too old to chase it there.