Blog Archives
Late Rains
Late April Rains
The rain makes everything all right,
Like blessed water flowing over lips.
Birds sing sweeter as if assured
Life will hang on in for spring,
As insects emerge from dry refuge
To delight in the damp leaves.
Eardrums encounter drips gently
Caress the mind into peaceful ease:
Merged in memories of seasons spent
Naïve as nestlings of summers to come.
It’s a rainy day today, which reminded me of a poem I wrote a month or so ago, about how the rain is welcome when the land is parched. At least in imagination it staves off the drought to come and we live a little longer.
Crazy Weather… just who’s the crazy one around here?
They say you never know yourself if you’re going crazy… perhaps it seems those around you are tho ones who are really crazy.
We call this weather crazy, but aren’t we really the crazy ones for not recognising it for what it is, and indeed really basically fucking batshit crazy for letting it happen without doing anything useful to stop or slow it, and in fact being the cause of it all…. and all the time knowing that it’s going to come back and not just bite us on the arse, but beat the shit out of us, till any sense we have left will be knocked out of us.
The Reaping of Disdain
Pink blossoms add extra beauty
To an autumnal almond tree:
Orange and auburn leaves left
Before falling with the frost
At least formally expected
If it arrives as it did normally in
November.
Sun and clear sky
Seem apt background to marvel
At young walnuts dotted on a
Bare-leaved tree, wondering if we
Will get a second harvest this year.
Like the oilmen grinning as the
Ice melts for their machines to
Begin drilling without awaiting
Spring,
We reap the short-term
Gains until the true harvest of
Our disdain, ignorance, apathy
Ripens in silent screaming of
Ecosystems stretched to snapping.
Cathedral Leaves
Cathedral Leaves
November sunlight shines at right angle
To catch leaves like stained window panes
On cathedral trees, lining riverbank, flanking
Dancing stream gleaming like black marble.
Drakes draw diamond wakes through dark
Water, songbirds call sonorous cries flying
Through timber, sweet as a child’s choir.
Marvelling at this flowing manifestation of
Nature’s majesty, I stand in reverence:
An experience as solemn as sacraments,
Holy as the spirit infusing these trunks
And tender tendrils dangling delicate
Leaves twisting daintily in the breeze.
And I wonder why those who kneel for
An invisible being in the sky, don’t even stop
To breath in, appreciate this display of
Beauty splayed out before them, inhale
Divinity in every breath of autumn
Dampness, soaked up sounds like dewfall,
Absorbed through skin as golden photons;
On shoulders felt the gentle hand of eternity.
The Winter of Our Discontent?
The Winter of Our Discontent?
.
.
We sit and watch autumn fall upon us, daily;
The park employees still sweep up leaves,
Now the last grass mowing has past.
Pigeons and ducks tuck into tossed bread,
Filling up for colder times, robins arrive from
Colder climes, while we wonder whether
Gates will weather open all the way to winter:
.
A thought neither here not there for the
Twittering finches in the turning trees
Above the bench as I write, depressing
Ideas of Christmas devoid of cavalcades,
Parties or people we would gift our presence.
.
To live with this disease in our midst, we need lifts:
Standing amid pines, or plans to participate,
Smiles and simple hugs: scenes to celebrate.
.
While robins free to fly away in warmer weather
Pigeons will persist on unswept seeds,
Finches filled with felicity, we will sit inside,
.
Pining, and chastising ourselves this idiocy;
Sitting watching screens instead of celebrations,
Imbibing wine in place of cherished faces.
