For a tougher picture of January see my lyric, 'January' in 'Months,' a series of poems on the months of the year, here - scroll down the post to find January.
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Eighty-thirty
on a January morn.
My
garden sycamore flings fingers high,Greyly-green and lichen-dusted,
To wrap them in the flushed fresh sheets of dawn.
Dews
of sunrise distilled the kohl-blue sky,
And
creeping bars of sunlight orange-rustedWalls and flaring window panes;
Cloudy as lemon squash, mist trickled by.
Atop
the tree by morning breezes gusted,
A
red-beard robin, fiery in his reins,Wildly yells breast-swollen brags,
Hen-wooing and by skirmish-scars encrusted.
Beneath,
stiff-legged starlings like toys on canes
Blackly
chatter, clapping their wings like flags;Bagatelling branch to branch
They tumble like a flail of glossy grains.
On
lower branches, two old spinsters’ workbags –
Mild
pigeons, greyly-powdered – glared askance;Primly-pained by the stares’ brawling
They lift their ruffs, wind-caught and fluffed to rags.
A
squirrel leapt and made those starlings dance;
Club-tailed,
Achilles-racing, climbing, crawling,Savagely it swung its claws –
The starlings fled; it gave a victor’s prance.
Come
leaf-time, quarrelling will earnest; bawling,
Breeding,
caparisoned, pursuing wars,Training fledglings with the tawse,
Bird, beast and man must shoulder the year’s hauling.
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©
January 2014