April Light
I’ve let the world of people go
in favour of growing
spring evenings,
what all the buds know,
the jonquils and the willow,
the prattling birds,
water chasing water to river,
fold of showers.
What sage said April is the cruellest month,
the year’s promise
in its tall shadows?
Let the world of people go.
Last Breath of Leaves
Cup a pear, hear it abscise,
number the days until ripe;
the river chuckles with swollen pride –
back to a ditch by six,
drained away to the scaly, selfish sea.
At dawn there’s steam across the water,
a cloud of egrets scuds over;
old and waiting, mud for water,
leaves for a last breath
of wind, tremor, helical free fall –
after life, lope and leap
to nattering heaps; then left
to turn to mull, down horizons sift,
forgotten shades of ochre,
lignin nets over rheumy, russet stones.
Fish the shilletts from their dark homes
in the deep, brown ocean;
grateful, cosseting crumbs swirl in,
close and ready for roots:
succouring limbs of bulb, corm, meristem.
Here my mulling days are numbered,
pride in appearance doomed;
hares teem across the water,
while clouds of regrets scud over;
for I am old and loping after life.
Leaf-ladder to the Sky
Dusk drums down the harbour,
Seagull sirens sound alarms,
A quiet motor sings;
Shards of mingling words slip away
Where huddled houses hug the bay;
A fish flops on the scalloped sea,
Ripples spreadly ring,
Ring, and ring, diminishing, to me:
Here are all enchantments reined,
Stowed within this compassed, solitary brain,
Haven to the slopes of coastal trees
Quiffed by parching westerlies;
Also, yellow leontodon,
Speckled on banks like sodium stars,
Where dreadlocked gorse gives way to grass;
Sheep-clipped sward; sun-lidded eyes; Doppler flies;
Various winds playing on and on,
While brambles leaf-ladder to the sky:
Here are all enchantments lain,
Meaningless, but marvellous, just the same.
Half-moon, bling of eventide
Hauls on saps which flow in time
To an ancient pulse;
Wyrt and weed together hear
The chuckle of the inner sphere;
Clackery of wind in rigging
Sees strait waters salsa,
Slap; soon sea-swells serry unforgiving:
Here are all enchantments made;
Out there, the consequences born, and paid.
Roses like suns arise and grow
Across the ramshackle brow;
A heavy scent
Swallows on the drooping air,
Is gone, recalled as summer
In the addled world behind,
Where wishes, sentiment
And bamboozling nature recombine;
Hence are all enchantments lulls,
Hummed by puzzled gardeners of the skull.
Featured Image: Daniele Idini