In Summer

   How I dislike rank summer’s growth,
   The fetid blooms and cankered leaves,
The gross sun’s steaming of a treacled broth,
Foliage piling in thick-cabled sheaves,
   And creatures killing so that blood
   In torn throats may be lapped as food.

   Yet billions of seeds decay

   Ungerminate, and tumid males
Dissipate their sperm like a drunkard’s spray;
By banks the waters froth in yeast-thick trails,
   Begetting larvae, fish fry, weed,
   Fusing carbon at breakneck speed.

   How sobering, that so much flesh

   So fleetly must enmould and die;
The young, though, raptured by becoming’s flash
Are too unresting to fear tragedy,
   Building, scheming, confecting treason,
   Secretion-driven, blind to reason.

   Not so the old, the disabused:

   Summer’s blitzkrieg growth, grabbing land,
Raping, devouring, flesh and freshness bruised,
Flings up victors’ bounty which hollowed hands
   Refuse, dismayed to have such choice,
   Bound to choose ill and draw the deuce.

   For eyes from which the scales are snatched

   Know well through loss the truth of things,
That fullness always falters, what is hatched
Falls dying in the mulch with broken wings;
   And off some beach man wades in sins
   From which a scapegoat wave begins.

   Summer currents propel that wave,

   Vaunt across oceans, gaining knots,
Until it smack some headland with a heave,
Pulling down rock stacks, homesteads, all in bits,
   And men may mourn that rubbled rent
   But, sun-hot, leap to argument.

   Old men should be explorers, says

   The sage, recklessly stirred by blue
Fresh skies and August sea swells’ dazzling glaze;
But paltry legs urge care: what end is true
   If men throw blows then, seized of breath,
   With naught to show fall down to death?

   No, deal me autumn, winter’s cold,

   When frost and blanching nights creep in –
Vistas of being all bedimmed by mould,
October’s sun become a scrap of tin,
   And January’s marble snows
   Lock purpose and response in floes.

   And yet I know that ramping death

   One night will pummel me in bed,
A clutched thrombosis, gasp and grinding teeth
Will crumb my ligaments and bones like bread;
   But hush, let winter torpid lie,
   And like a mouse or flea sneak by.

   Chill stasis, freeze me at your breast,

   A loath chewer of summer’s broil –
The bawling puke and faeces of the nest,
Microbes and sepsis leeching flesh to oil;
   Energy, being, screeching-mad,
   Panting, feeding and killing-glad:

Raw-scented bucks disdain my careful tread,

Doff, then bully past, buffeting my head.
 

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© August 2014