We need to teach the children the old words,
words like brabble and grubble,
twitter-light and clinkerbell;
words which dance and trip and slip
and drip like honey off the tongue
Teach them that a hazy halo of cloud
around the moon is called a moonbroch
and that swiftly moving clouds are named
cairies;
how a vixen’s wedding is a sunny shower of
rain, and that a single sunbeam breaking through thick cloud is known as a messenger
Teach them to know the seasons and scents
of queen of the meadow and bride of the sun,
how to tell Jupiter’s staff from fairy fingers
and which roses bloom with the strawberry moon
Teach them to spot pricklebacks in the tottlegrass,
how to recognise a smeuse or a bishop-barnaby,
when to watch the sky for flittermice and yaffles,
and to pay attention to the dumbeldore and mousearnickle
as she graces the lazy leahs of summer
Teach them a few of the old Sussex words for mud,
like gubber and slub and stodge and pug,
so they know that the precious soil beneath their toes
is anything but worthless dirt
Teach them to be users and keepers and makers
of the words which bring the land alive:
a storybook, where everything has its rightful place, including us;
where the wilds are fearful and filled with magic
and people do noble things, and nothing is impossible
In this world of harsh new words —
words like planetary dysmorphia and solastalgia,
extinction debt and grief mitigation,
megadrought and megafire,
anthropogenic, pyrocene,
words which alarm and get stuck in our throats
describing a world which our hearts cannot grasp —
we need to teach the children the old words,
so that if they should feel lost,
the old words might colour for them
a warm and breathing, living map,
a light to guide them safely home.