Rewilding of the Dynamite Factory Ardeer Peninsula, North Ayrshire

by Angi Holden

Summer’s end, and the leaves are turning.
Soon they will be airborne,
falling into an ambush of drifts.

Slender trees, broken by the seawind
hand, half-tumbled, hard to distinguish
from the concrete posts
which once formed boundaries
of mesh and razor-wire.

Now both sides – the inside and the out –
return to the earth, become layers
of scrub and bracken,
home to the old creatures:
the woodlouse and the shrew,
the rabbit and the jay.
Listen to the vixen’s call,
the wrenching creak of timber,
the susurration of the breeze.
Nature’s slow and quiet explosions.