We stood on the high hill,
listening to messages of gusts,
syllables blurred, distorted, lashing
through resonant boughs.
Neither were decipherable,
the register, the intonation,
though we partook of raw power
blowing back from precipitous edges,
up from a plain so flooded with sun-gild
that the dark leaves of holly and ivy,
splashed on waxen mirror-furnaces,
were tongued choirs of light-praise,
up from the lower woods where warning calls,
echoed and re-echoed from hidden avians,
and the campion, pinkly evident,
and the white flower of the bramble, struggling.
We lifted up on tip-toe at the grace
of the two peregrines, who read it
in calm on wings held still and wide.
Without one flap they slid them slowly by
so spirit-level, slipstream even,
braced round and held a hover there
to turn at will; and sudden-launch, speck-far,
accelerating remoteness.
Returning, the orange sky would've glazed
a good roast duck - sets us thinking.
Now, a sliver of a cresent moon in the blue
blesses the trees that half-conceal it.
YOU ARE READING
Greenclad.
PoezjaIvy-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...
