| WILD AND FREE Start in the morning with fresh Bread and Cheese From the hawthorn branch before flower buds come. Gather fine needles of chives from the verges, In lanes as they wake in the rising of spring. As the sun climbs to midday make delicate salads Of lime leaves and birch leaves and Jack by the Hedge, With young shoots of toothed dandelion, burnet and marjoram; Sorrel comes later with sharp sour edge. Nettle tips make you a soup fit for kings, With potato for thickening, lovage for taste; Such a green, such a green, such a rich royal colour, And follow with fish in a wild garlic sauce. Gold apples in autumn and shiny sweet blackberries, Mushrooms in meadows and nuts on the tree; This is our wild, these our woodlands and valleys, Abundant with feastings and all of it free. Jehanne Mehta 6th May 2009 |