Is It Real?

Sitting in the University Parks in Oxford I used to
get an immense sense of unreality; the heat
of the sun; the too-green grass surrounded by tailored
buildings and the echoing of clapping cricket matches,
people’s voices everywhere, everywhere,
distant, hollow constructs of hyped up,
got to be good parents making automatons of their
children and of themselves.

Asked why I live here I reply because it’s real.
Asked to explain myself, I say Oxford felt like a
bubble; here the trees are growing because they do
And the grass is working with whatever else happens
to be around (heather? gorse? thistles? bracken?), uncurated.
The rocks breach the skin and hair of the earth sharply, and no one protects it; animals manage.

No one protects any of us, but by living with what is
real then we know life, fear, death and choice and truth.