Garden
The lid of night-long-raincloud rolled away
and over roofs the dazzle-stab of sun
through empty blue, smudged by contrails astray,
lighting wet hedge, diamonding drops thereon.
Still rests the yew, bent top-nots hardly astir.
Sparrows chirrup, looking to the feeder.
…............
Wheels
Gammon in the oven, our wheels run
on roads light-paved, visor down,
strangely-waved day, where windscreen ice has been
so long to dry: this sun warms nothing,
horizon wide and unmitigated as is
the conflagration of gold apocalypse,
chalice of winter to car-warmed lips.
…...............
Raw-Head
Farmyard guard dogs baying
and all their coarse-hoarse morse
fades where small birds warn:
"Chip-chop and hurry-along there,
for 'air bites shrewdly' ."
Academic the roar of far furnace
sunfire within the long-barrow,
birch-wooded shadow,
cold shoulder of the high hill.
Turn that bleak corner
and all along the blinding gold we go,
limping Hephaestus-like through thick mud,
the frost on ridges ploughed below,
rich light on furrowed hillsides spilled.
Misty the distance, sun-hazing exultation,
the miles and miles of farmsteads
fading mellow, leaking a dimension
to the hills - a line of beige-green seemings -
beyond the pine candelabra tips lit,
the algaed-oaks in greengold sheen
and the pale birches transubstantiated.
Bitter the grip on stick or phone / camera,
on sandwich, apple, bottled-drink.
Gloveless, we can't endure this hilltop wuther
but must flee, mindful of the waiting gammon,
down past nettle field, still somehow green,
down the bleak mud-trod and shadowed way -
until we halt to hear
the winter-song of robins.
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...
