For a spot of bracing iambic pentameter, and for contrast, here's a link to "A Blackbird After Rain," written in November 2013 and posted on this blog on 4 July 2016.
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Who doesn’t cheer October’s sun,
Weakling, gone pasty, but still warm?
Standing at the kitchen sink who’ll not,
Side-glancing through the open door at autumn’s dun,
Feel body-comfort (like a corm
Amassing energy in its tight knot
Against the winter’s frozen thrall)
From sun’s delightful finger dabs on skin
And clothes, gifting a wistful concilation
That ice-and-dark time nears,
Wringing with wind-sprung tears.
But first, a sleepy fly made call,
Slow-gliding at the door, then in:
Tottering the air in vacillation,
It pondered round the kitchen then with buzzing drawl
It bull-nosed to the hall – a jinn,
Wary, not over-keen on exploration,
But seeking resting space to sink
In season’s fuddlement – a sleep, a death,
To end its brief life’s gene-pushed concitation,
Those days in searching spent,
Prospecting ordure’s vent.
Later, both here and there, in chink,
On wall, it flustered like a breath
Wandering the rooms to find summation;
Settled, if poked it wouldn’t move, instead would shrink
As longing for the pupa’s sheath,
All struggles, feeding, breeding, at cessation.
Two days in windows, crept on chairs,
It lasted, then, one morning’s clouded chill,
Was found, brittle in death’s last habitation,
A dropped speck on the floor,
Swept up and then no more.
Well, autumn-winter’s plangent airs,
Tranquil, but lessing heat to nil,
Mediate mind’s puzzled divagation:
All, no? are like that fly, though some be wheat, some tares,
Less dozy but a’quest to fill
With knowing life’s closed room, its oscitation;
And at man’s end, despite the spun
Bewail of obsequies with drums and shawm,
Must not his corpse like any fly that’s swat
Be tidied off, that days,
Unfussed, pursue their ways?
====================
© December 2021
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Who doesn’t cheer October’s sun,
Weakling, gone pasty, but still warm?
Standing at the kitchen sink who’ll not,
Side-glancing through the open door at autumn’s dun,
Feel body-comfort (like a corm
Amassing energy in its tight knot
Against the winter’s frozen thrall)
From sun’s delightful finger dabs on skin
And clothes, gifting a wistful concilation
That ice-and-dark time nears,
Wringing with wind-sprung tears.
But first, a sleepy fly made call,
Slow-gliding at the door, then in:
Tottering the air in vacillation,
It pondered round the kitchen then with buzzing drawl
It bull-nosed to the hall – a jinn,
Wary, not over-keen on exploration,
But seeking resting space to sink
In season’s fuddlement – a sleep, a death,
To end its brief life’s gene-pushed concitation,
Those days in searching spent,
Prospecting ordure’s vent.
Later, both here and there, in chink,
On wall, it flustered like a breath
Wandering the rooms to find summation;
Settled, if poked it wouldn’t move, instead would shrink
As longing for the pupa’s sheath,
All struggles, feeding, breeding, at cessation.
Two days in windows, crept on chairs,
It lasted, then, one morning’s clouded chill,
Was found, brittle in death’s last habitation,
A dropped speck on the floor,
Swept up and then no more.
Well, autumn-winter’s plangent airs,
Tranquil, but lessing heat to nil,
Mediate mind’s puzzled divagation:
All, no? are like that fly, though some be wheat, some tares,
Less dozy but a’quest to fill
With knowing life’s closed room, its oscitation;
And at man’s end, despite the spun
Bewail of obsequies with drums and shawm,
Must not his corpse like any fly that’s swat
Be tidied off, that days,
Unfussed, pursue their ways?
====================
© December 2021
