Saturday 24 January 2015

Months: February

The poems for March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December and January in this sequence were posted on 24 February 2014, 21 March, 20 April, 24 May, 20 June, 29 July, 29 August, 27 September, 25 October, 24 November and 30 December 2014. This is the last of the poems: I shall gather them all together in one sequence subsequently.
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A niggard thaw fouls pavements; filthy melt
Refreezes; encrusted snow streaks parkland
Like a scraped canvas. Spattered frost like felt
Tops hedge and soil, blighting with a thrawn hand

The muted froth of heathers. Scarlet berries
Decay in the holly though the cherry tree
Powders its crown with hesitant fancies
Of blossom. Taut daffodil wands make free
      
With the breeze, dipping their yolk-heads broodily
Over the beanshoot-skinny crocuses.
The tide is slack. Clouds eddy wearily,
Blotting the sun – a disc which focuses

No light nor heat. Men like woodlice in litter
Grudgingly stir, their torpid warmth combusted
By the seasons’ peristalsis. But the bitter
Monochrome wind discourages bombastic

Gesture: better to re-curl in shavings
Like a breathing nodule than be woken
By an incautious morning mob of starlings –
Their wings cracking like a black cloth shaken.

Dead water: sopping sands glitter; suede shingle
Darkens beneath indigo shadow; the waves
Lift careless heads like seals. But that wrangle
Of waters is unstable; soon that which laves

Will pound, driving up the foreshore to thrash
The sea wall and startle all drowsing flesh.

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© February 2013