In 2012-13 I wrote a series of shorter poems on the months of the year using a similar form for each poem. I posted the complete set of "Months" on 6 February 2015 and it is linked here. In 2014-15 I wrote a series of lyrics on the year's months, called "Months: Lyrics" and that series was posted on 11 March 2016. It is linked here. Between 2019 and 2024 I wrote a third "Months" series, this time concentrating on the sea and littoral and using a wide range of forms. The poems were also much longer and much more discursive. I am now posting them as I revise them. I will put some notes about each poem's form and references at the end of each post. The first poem in this sea series (for March) was posted on Friday 25 May 2025, link to it here; the poem for April was posted on 28 July 2025, link to it here.
There are four epigraphs for the entire "Months: The Sea" sequence and they are posted at the head of the March poem.
I forgot to mention in the March posting that each poem carries an ascription of the liturgical importance of the month. These ascriptions were widely used in the pre-Vatican II Church: they were yet another casualty of the destructive consequences of that foolish Council.
I do not appear to have written much else specifically about May. I've found two poems: "May Fragment," written in May 2015 and posted on 15 November 2019, is linked here, and "Spring and Meaning," written in February 2014 and posted on 21 November 2016, is linked here.
(Month of the Blessed Virgin Mary)
When the tide brims, the sea, you would think, might leap
Its broad basin; it looms over the beach strip
Like syrup taut in its own thickness, lazy
But suddenly deep.
At shore grey-green though cobalt-blue at distance,
Flashed with white horses, it slaps, plucks, the pier struts,
Gargling, and darkening the limpets and weed
Supine in its jaunts.
Post-lunch, in convoy, dinghies assay the year’s
First race – ducklings docile in the May-mild haze;
The sun, now hot, smudged to thinness, high and small,
If stared at makes tears.
Wet-suited (year-young, the water’s cold as frost),
A father teaches risk to his wave-tumbled
Daughter, otter-lithe, crowing as, upended,
She handstands like a post.
Quivering on air, gulls quarter the beach, tensed
To steal; trippers, wind-pink, incautious as lambs,
Display their sauced burgers, swag to the curt gulls
For all will be flensed.
Café society! Warmth and the skin-balm air
Tempt tables and chairs, the “quality” in high-
End casuals take coffee, lunch done, still grazing
On a fat éclair:
Croque Monsieur ou Madame, carafes of Sancerre,
Bottles of Keller Pils, and now Espresso
Or Cortado: how fine to stretch limbs, relax,
Confidingly share
The year’s project – expansion, promotion, new
Directions, travel: but voyager look north!
Over the hills, blue indeed, the clouds are thick –
Cumulus, whose hue
Of grey sobriety imposes grim forethought
That though self-sure doing, choice, enthusing of
The swarming mass, enthralled in sheer aggregate,
Lie inland – ah sought
After in spades! – so do dog eat dog treachery,
Ruthlessness, politics (tautologous?), in
Fact sin! He who stumbles is threshed by fixed-faced
Peons whose hurry
Drives anguish that life pays at piece rate except
Winner take all. Sin? Of a trice we sound depths
For sin is but Will, and who steps from his door
But that his will stept?
