Take but three steps into garden now
and through the deep scent-portal stumble,
swoon to your seat, to breakfast alfresco,
a haunted rationalist
in a May orchard,
sweet winds trickling* down the white confetti.
Beauty proffered at the bough, profusion
will blossom-blind you
white-you-out of all consideration,
fork halfway to mouth,
while blackbird chronicles cascade
shimmering inner wynds,
drifting far from a thought.
It's the bold, companionable fly, that Jacobin,
who wants the savor of your plate
draws you back
to the pleasantries of edges,
the angled paths, oblique approaches,
the complex geometries of a simple lust
for a bacon scrap.
We're better off than Hamlet - no old King to kill -
and yet we cause as much collateral, blundering,
that none will 'scape whipping*, unless
in his kind court of mind.
..............................
*'trickling' from the phrase 'littered with blossoms trickling' - from Wilfred Owen's 'Exposure'.
*Shakespeare's 'Hamlet': Act 2 Scene 2
POLONIUS My lord, I will use them according to their desert.
HAMLET God's bodykins, man, much better. Use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping? Use them after your own honor and dignity. The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.
However it must be pointed out that Hamlet does not exactly live up to his words, a common part of the human condition.
