A poem by Alison Brackenbury, and a Victorian postcard, to herald 2021.
![](https://www.caughtbytheriver.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/ad18962ffb0bf9d413e223337d7ecc1c-1024x774.jpg)
By Cranham’s road, where ceaseless traffic flows,
they perched, on awkward toes,
beside bleached hogweed, mud.
The lowest fought. Their orange lords leapt free.
White ribs, fanned to a tree,
matched palest clouds. Paths led
our stony scramble to a wind-shocked height.
There Gloucester rose to light,
each tower wore mist’s slow hood.
By ferns, persistent streams, I thought of them,
gold, amber, apricot on one small stem.
They burned the brightest thing in all the wood.