Months: May

The poems for March and April in this sequence were posted on 24 February 2014 and 21 March.
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At last, a thrilling warmth and milk-fresh light
Announce the illimitable fullness of spring;
It’s there in the magpie’s rat-a-tat flight
And the terror the squirrel’s leap can bring.

Verge grass and spring wheat gyrate in the wind

Dislodging the greedy linnet; unfriendly gorse
Muskily blooms whilst irises, determined
As barmaids, loll, magnificently coarse.

Meringue-like cumulus wanders the sky

Worrying the chattering bluebells below;
Damp banks like biers where the dead daffodils lie
Will be purged for new growth by the groundsman’s hoe.

A seawater dusk displays Venus’ pearl:

Since nipping dawn men have been fraught as bees;
Now, placid pigeons roost among leaves whose furl
Glows goldenly in the draining sun’s lees.

Not all is beauty: the rough-skinned dock swells

Grossly, leprous and kibbled, and spleenwort
Spoils all; but the laburnum’s butter-curl bells
Are cheerful, and forget-me-not is pert.

The pink emulsioned jay and bouncy wren

Fuss for their young: girls in their summer show
Ripen for mating, root-making, children;
Their men sweat and provide; but if they sow

Shall they reap? Vainglory tempts them to the hill’s peak:

If crossed, will they return with what they seek?

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© May 2012