A strip of Industrial carpet,
neatly fixed to the top of a wooden gate,
formed by frost bristles,
lined along the grain...
Cirrus wave and contrail glowing
wide over crystal fields,
whose apple-white
blondes in streaks
of lancing sunrise
rakng tree-shadow...
Cold desert adorning,
frozen gestures are
the oaken art
of their stark dormancy.
Bitterness mutters
in ivy jacketed hollows
of a morning-mind,
gliding by these slivered fields,
bathed in rising radiance,
that even now blinds on a turn
along the pond-ice in a field-corner,
then strobes hard
pummeling into an eye -
hedgerow-flicker-torture.
Step from the car
into breath-misted calm
over a tarmac of stars.
.....................
The elder sticks hold up their open hands,
long empty, attentive birds deserted.
Now brittle bones, they lean towards the West
where fine-twigged thorns have netted them a sun,
tangled in immaterial gauzes.
It sinks and strains the netting, winter-slow.
The small birds vocal under this light blue,
so fine-hazed it wont hold hard a contrail,
sit sobering as dusk's deep shadow climbs.
I hear a blackbird trying out a phrase.
Though cold and needy, impatient beings yet,
the birds are early in their rituals.
My left hand's bitten on the board it holds
for right to scribble, blithely taking time
to re-define and strike-through till the sigh.
Perhaps this sun will stay forever caught
by thorn spells, soothing the brittle elder.
................................
Out again
I catch the red -
a fierce blush,
more deeply indignant
than troubled love,
cast for by bird flocks,
received by horizon trees.
...............
YOU ARE READING
Greenclad.
PoetryIvy-jacketed, December oaks on road-borders shock their stark gestures at us now, through sun and sleet, that January will yawn at and February, propping eyelids, will desperately ignore, longing for blossom; and making do with the least of anything...
