Poem: Amid the Fields of Oil Seed Rape

This year there is a lot of colza planted around Pamplona – canola oil plants, usually called oil seed rape (though that name is becoming unpopular for obvious reasons: Tisdale, in Canada, called the land of rape and honey is considering changing it’s motto…)
It’s a lucrative crop these days. Anyway, I’ve been driving and cycling and walking through these fields and they made an impact, so I wrote a poem.

Amid the Fields of Oil Seed Rape

I do not take a camera to the fields.
The country is too immense to condense
In a simple snapshot, or fifty.
Surrounded by a sea of yellow
I take only memories, including birdsong,
The touch of breeze in trees, carrying
Sugared scent of oil seed rape
Flowing over brows and filling senses
Such that only memory can contain.

but then I went an took a photo – doesn’t do it justice, though