---------------
Grey days of rain and wind and cold
Mock thought that May has taken hold.
The hedgerow whitebeam, barely leaved,
White-flags as by the wind it’s heaved;
The blue-graped lilac, pinned to walls,
Is battered loose by rain and falls;
Looming, roaring, the sycamore
Like racing waves from shore to shore
Eddies in a seaweed-green
Now depth-black and now pure sheen.
The red-faced goldfinch, golden-flanked,
Is flung by wind and pushed and yanked,
Its song like water in a sluice,
Trickling chimefully, sweet as juice.
The morning air with lisps of mist
Binds chilly fronds on face and wrist,
And clouds like crumpled newsprint stain
The sky’s wet-grubby lunar plain.
That sycamore which fills the view,
Soaked with rain and morning dew,
And restless as a vat at boil,
Snaps its leaves with the crack of foil.
Its hanging flowers, like forcing bags,
Marzipan-green and stuffed as swags,
Lurch crazily in the wind’s brew,
Seasicked by the tree’s twist and slew.
That medusa crown of flashing eyes,
Kerchiefs waving and wind-snatched cries,
Later, in a gush of spring-hot sun,
Will steam and crackle, drenching done,
And, placid, those hung flowers display –
Girls’ ponytails all tricked for May,
Wet-bright and butter-yellow specked,
Artfully swung to coy effect!
But roiling clouds, puce-black with rain,
Wind-tumbled, clatter past again,
Dousing the sun’s brief torch of heat
With wringing rain swathes, pleat by pleat,
So that these days of wind and cold
Mock thought that May might soon take hold.
====================
©
May 2015