The hush and shush of ash

Carol Ann Duffy, Britain's poet laureate, writes about the unpronounceable Iceland volcano and (please, I beg, note the pun) its fall-out.

SILVER LINING
Five miles up the hush and shush of ash.
Yet the sky is as clean as a white slate
I could write my childhood there.
Selfish to sit in this garden, listening to the past.
A gentleman bee wooing its flower, a lawnmower.
When the grounded planes mean ruined plans, holidays on hold,
saw absences at weddings, funerals.
Windless commerce.
But Britain’s birds sing in this spring from Inverness to Liverpool,
From Crieff to Cardiff, Oxford, London Town, Land’s End to John O’Groats.
The music, silence summoned, that Shakespeare heard,
and Edward Thomas.
Briefly, us.