New Year Poems

Happy New Year, all.

I haven’t been on line so much over the winter. Not much to make one want to be, in many ways.

Anyway, I wrote a couple of poems on New Years Day, one a little more hopeful than the other.

Hope you like them.

One of the plant pots on my balcony, with Alyssum, a small seedling of those tomato-like plants, and some other species like navelwort and Arabidopsis/ rock cress that self-seeded.

            Rewilding Little Lives 

Flowers in my window box this New Years Day

Brought smiles to see flies upon the white petals

Delightfully drawn to pollinate these late blooms

Providing provender in winter and spring seeds.

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Insight that acts of rewilding can be so easy:

Simply leave a little land for life, and equally

Life will return once we allow it land, thus we

Keep everything alive a little longer by these 

Little acts and actions, ceding some concrete 

So when our concrete recedes life can yet proceed.

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            Nothing Changes On New Year’s Day

We kiss at midnight and wish

One another the best, that 

The world will rise above our 

Worries with the coming year;

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Raise our champagne to celebrate

Our survival of the last, then we

Rest in unhurried slumber, until

The bells ring in the faithful for

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New year’s Service, and we 

Step out to see too the debris,

Finding revellers have left their

Refuse in the most amazing places.

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Picking up a cracked plastic party

Trumpet, we ponder if we will play

These in the next decades, and stroll

Slowly to our sacred spaces, with 

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A grim smile, while the sun slants low,

Watching Earth go round just the way 

It spun yesterday, today.

Slowing down Spring

A path dividing a wheat and a oilseed rape field filled with flowers and insects under a rain-heavy sky.

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            Slowing Down Spring

Leaden heavy clouds lay upon the land,

Slowing its spin, it seems, the wind

Whistling chill, winds back spring:

So all pauses, apparently, and allows us,

Perhaps, appreciate all a little longer:

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Continued calling of song thrushes,

Tree-creepers, warblers and woodpeckers;

The candle cones perched upon pines;

Chandeliers of chestnut blooms

Letting petals swirl to gather in drifts

And dropping fruits of tiny infant seeds;

New green sprigs on twigs of spruce trees;

Dandelions, the sign of spring, still

The dominant design of spring,

Drawing swarms of insects, revived

As running rivers; glowing gloss and

Ripples of graining barley, regaining

The aspect of May in Spain; golden

Sunspots, when rays sneak out of clouds,

That simply seep into souls like

Helium to help them soar…

Making every day a delayed delight

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We might not see for many more:

As spring shortens ever more and

Assimilates to frightful summer 

Sooner than we’re prepared for.

Rainbow marks the return of the sun, to fields not fully seeded from the earlier drought. We got a storm that dropped a lot of water this weekend which hopefully has saved the harvestt.

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We had a few weeks with cooler temperatures, which was a big relief, even in Navarra. Not so much rain in many places, but it gave us time to really see the green before it turns to gold. Which it was threatening to too soon this hear – to dusty tan and brown, too. And it seems spring will shorten as we go forward into climate chaos.

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Of course, in our village the verges went brown after the council yet again sprayed it with glyphosphate… And one local farmer did the same to his field verges, which just ruins my day as I cycle up the hill…

It’s just ugly, apart from idiotic etc… But it runs a brown line all the way up… in an area which has a natural park and is advertised to tourists to go hiking and mushroom picking in the forests above these fields…

Spring Springing, Sprung

Potted flowers upon the wall of a patio in Cordoba… not the hydrangea of the first stanza, but each a point of light in our lives.

            The Great Unfurling

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Potted hydrangea upon a windowsill

Sets forth fresh leaves: tender, verdant

Sheets break out along dry sticks, fragile.

I daily watch them form as March marches.

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Granted the gift of infinity of seconds,

In observation, I wish to break out,

Past the patio to spend

Spring beyond, experience

Every plant’s rebirth and blossoming,

To miss not this great unwinding,

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From forest floor, wild asparagus and

Ferns unfurling, breaking forth

Each bud, young leaves extending,

Spreading, fat fingered

Fronds from chestnut trunks;

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Witness every sprig of speedwell,

Burst of buttercups, 

Spray of daisies, and breeze

Dancing dandelions, dainty dog violets.

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Later let me see the fall

Of flower petals to the path,

From each high floral bouquet:

Dashing with pink and white

The grass, creating a colourful carpet,

Delicate to delight our way,

.

Through this season; so short, yet

Too intense to appreciate the display.

Been a busy few weeks with little posting – though a fair bit of poetry and some writing, and lots of reading! But mostly just enjoying the spring, which is blooming lovely, if too dry in a lot of places.

I just spent the weekend down in Andalucia, and the heat is rising quickly there, so it’s almost summer, with swifts screaming in the skies already. On the train on the way down, it was clear many fields will give little harvest this year.

Spring is always my most distracted season and this year is no exception. or an exception to the extent that I’ve decided to spend as much time as I can just soaking it up, so I spent hours staring out the train window rather than writing or reading. Nevertheless, the words come, stored up for winter or spluttered out for a short poem.

Hope you like it.

Cherry bossoms in the park. The petals will soon strew the paths in pink.

PS, when I returned after the Easter Holidays the hydrangea was nearly dead, having been left unwatered. I gave it some and hope it will recover (it’s not mine, by the way!)

February means it’s Spring in some places

            They’re Only Daisies

Spring mildness brings blooming back

A splash of buttercups, daisies

And dandelions, and my

Heart soars to see these

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As if the summer burst forth 

In fullness of fuchsia, orchids,

Roses and hydrangea,

Even though they’re only daisies.

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Perhaps such sights would send

Soul soaring to much higher delight,

But little low pleasures enchant me

Easily, and I find myself exultant

To discover thus elation on a daily basis.

Well, we’ve survived the first month of 2021, which clearly hasn’t turned out as groovy as we’d hoped, so far.

I am patiently waiting, like the rest of the world, on a vaccine to be offered to me. I hope to get one before summer and be able to travel home to see folks.

Besides that, my life is pretty normal, apart from wearing masks all day.

School is still in session presidentially in Spain, and we’ve had few problems since we’re masking and gelling all the time.

My son’s swimming lessons restarted! other after school activities are going on without problems, too.

The bars were open at 30% occupancy, but are now only open for outside seating, but we can have a pincho on a Saturday afternoon with the kids now that the snow has melted and milder weather has returned.

I know it’s not spring here in Spain till the second half of March, but there are flowers out there, and I always stick to my Irish seasons anyway. Except for August. That’s still summer!

And I am feeling hopeful we won’t be kept inside during spring the way we were last year. Just a walk outside the city walls is all I ask.

I’ve written a fair few poems since Christmas, and I am slowly working through my WIP, Palu and the Pyramid Builders – last third of the manuscript, with 200k written so far.

I’ll be looking for beta readers in a year or two!

Meanwhile, I hope to post more poems this spring, and if you’re looking for a quick read, my novels are all still available for the time being, including my newest novella, The Logical Solution.