Eyelids

The stanzas are written as haikus with the usual syllable count of 5, 7, 5. I've introduced rhyme in the third line of each stanza to bind the poem together.

   A sort of hunched-up winter contra-version of this poem is "Impromptu," written in February 1980 and posted here on 26 January 2012.

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But by God you’ve lived!
Late June, the afternoon sun’s
Intense, the wind strong,

The sea’s a’broil with
Plasma of leaping flash-flakes,
Flinging heat that shone

Glarely on suede sand
And hot-stoned shingle. The gulls
Crouched, panting, weighed by

The sky’s vaulted tons,
Lapis-blue, peremptory.
Lips and tongue are spry

With ozone-souse, flung
By the in-roaring waves, thumped
By wind’s fisted blast.

An hour’s prom walk is
Enough, threading the basted
Bodies, thin or vast,

Crisping in sun, all
Angst-work annulled in heat-trance.
Wake up! There’s self’s thrill

In this mêle of air’s
Primary dazzle, frank to
Enthuse the poised will.

Later, returned home,
An iced drink misting its glass,
Eyelids sting, cheeks throb,

Livened by sun’s, wind’s
Afterburn. Back! Go back, where
The sea shouts, gulls mob!

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© August 2022

The Spider

This is my only poem about spiders as far as I recall. I have, however, written a lot of poems about birds. So for comparison I give a link to my eleven year old poem, "Two Sparrows" here.

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A tiny spider but a mil or two,
Vaulted in terror as my finger swept
Above him like a comet razing earth:
   The domicile he kept

Disastered, gamely bristling legs like clubs,
He fled for safety to the cupboard’s bounds.
Ten days he’d commoned on that smooth white door,
   Sorting his granuled founds;

I him ignored, he me, but then my hand,
Forgetful, upside-downed with whistling winds
His lunar plain’s calm atmosphere, shaking
   His web-tied goods to flinds.

With caution, later, he sidled back and set
Himself again to hoard his winnowed shreds;
For him, at scale, that door’s unfeatured stretch
   Was place, with meats and breads,

A neighbourhood, terrained and closely-known,
Though heavened with a void, now light, now not,
Tornadoed by destroyings beyond all grasp
   Of his brain’s challenged dot.

What gulfs between that minim thing and I –
Both size and concept-handling depth of mind!
Looming, to him I’m but a whimful god,
   Destructive, lenient, blind;

But then, what depths, what deeps! draw endlessly
Between the Fleshless Ones and my garbed self;
To them, had Yahweh not touched flesh I’d be
   A bug upon a shelf.

Again, though Angels crowd the One’s just Hand,
Unbridgeable’s the tract that clefts His thoughts
From theirs: we none have being in ourselves
   Except He stoops and wroughts.

Many’s the thinker, centuries-long, who’s twist
His mind to know what’s known-not but it show
Itself! We come, we go – truth’s behind-veiled,
   And death’s its pilgrim’s glow.

So smile upon that spider’s life’s endeavours,
His treasured husks and flakes; soon he’ll fall prey
To some toothed gatherer, so let his dwelling
   Prosper him his day.

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© July 2022