For comparison, way back in October 1979 I wrote "A Bowl of Chrysanthemums," one of my few "free verse" poems. I posted it on 12 November 2011 and it is linked here. Much more recently, in April 2015, I wrote "A Cherry Blossom," in which I looked closely at a single cherry blossom. I had in mind Jon Silkin's sequence of "Flower Poems" in which, similarly, he made a close study of a range of flowers. "A Cherry Blossom" was posted on 26 September 2019 and is linked here.
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At summer’s end, from every dint or edge,
Michaelmas daisies surge to shout their say:
All’s failing: winds and chilling air,
Short light and whipping rain,
Soon will brown with phthisis this spray, that spray
Of summer’s delicates; but ledge and hedge,
St Michael’s daisies, against the grain,
Maintain their dark-eyed stare.
Ha, the sea winds craze the blond-haired sedges,
The grey salt light frowns on the twitching gorse;
But orange-pupiled, iris’d blue,
Wax-brown legged, loll leaved,
Michael’s daisies rattle in shaken morse,
Asserting ledge-grabbed rights which autumn’s dredges
Will not dislodge till all’s bereaved
By November’s freezing dew.
They’re proxy of the seaboard men who pledged
Life’s limb from birth, gouging sea depths for spoil;
And both, hard-minded in life’s risk,
Defy the weather’s clamour;
Draining of colour, trawling sea or soil,
They cling this side of winter, rooted, kedged,
Firm, though, that next year, come summer’s glamour,
They’ll brag in the wind’s whisk.
===============
© August 2024
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At summer’s end, from every dint or edge,
Michaelmas daisies surge to shout their say:
All’s failing: winds and chilling air,
Short light and whipping rain,
Soon will brown with phthisis this spray, that spray
Of summer’s delicates; but ledge and hedge,
St Michael’s daisies, against the grain,
Maintain their dark-eyed stare.
Ha, the sea winds craze the blond-haired sedges,
The grey salt light frowns on the twitching gorse;
But orange-pupiled, iris’d blue,
Wax-brown legged, loll leaved,
Michael’s daisies rattle in shaken morse,
Asserting ledge-grabbed rights which autumn’s dredges
Will not dislodge till all’s bereaved
By November’s freezing dew.
They’re proxy of the seaboard men who pledged
Life’s limb from birth, gouging sea depths for spoil;
And both, hard-minded in life’s risk,
Defy the weather’s clamour;
Draining of colour, trawling sea or soil,
They cling this side of winter, rooted, kedged,
Firm, though, that next year, come summer’s glamour,
They’ll brag in the wind’s whisk.
===============
© August 2024
