Months: Lyrics: November

The poems for March, April, May, June, July, August, September and October in this series were posted on 14 March, 13 April, 9 May, 15 June, 11 July, 8 August, 11 September and 9 October 2015.
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Mid-morning twilight is the brightest hour
And drab is any final rot-bruised flower, 
   The damp-drenched air is thin to breathe,
   Pricking cheek and spotting sleeve; 
      Slugs glisten in the mould,
      Half-stunned by the wet cold.

   The wagtail at the rain-brimmed ruts

   Dashes forlornly, flutters, tuts;
      A florid pheasant lands,
      Running for the stands 
Of filigree and white-bark birch now stripped
Of bile-spot leaves which all night long have dripped.

   The ash trees gape above the waste

   Of straw-blanched roughland grass – a paste
Of mud and water welling through its roots; 
A green-dark hemlock sags beneath its fruits  
      Of sullen rainfall drops –
      November’s bitter slops.

Mid-afternoon, a dusk like devil’s grog

Stuffs the weald’s valleys with creosote fog; 
      In fields and town mist climbs,
      Crisps pools and glass with rimes;
   Cold-thickened night solidifies:
   The wagtails roost with wary eyes. 

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© November 2014

  

 

 

Dawn Fox

In the second stanza "the docks" are weeds not places where one unloads ships.

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(5.00 am, 20 August 2013)

   Woken in pre-dawn gloom

   When gut uncertainties
   Harry the dusk-dark room,  
   A fox shrieked like disease;
My dulled bones stirred and shrank awry
From that cold anthem of a cry.  

   Though August heats were over

   This was my year’s first fox;
   Why had it broken cover
   Screaming beside the docks?   
Joy it had slaughtered for its fill
Or anger it had missed a kill?

   Worse, was its scream a warning –

   That stink and yellow jaw! –
   Fraught in the silent morning
   As the squealing of a door?
Was it for the past a reckoning,
And to some beyond a beckoning?    

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© August 2013

 

Months: Lyrics: October

The poems for March, April, May, June, July, August and September in this series were posted on 14 March, 13 April, 9 May, 15 June, 11 July, 8 August and 11 September 2015.
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A lime leaf, wind-whipped from its tree,
Switchbacked in air and plucked my wrist,
Its broad-faced green had blanched like cloth  
And rust had made its edges twist;
   Sick, with no remedy, 
   It fell like a struck moth. 

October’s like the grey-backed sea,

Brutal and languid under mist, 
Extracting life from summer’s growth
And crushing it as winter’s grist:
   That lime leaf guilelessly 
   Has blundered into truth.  
 

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© October 2014
 

Delphic Words

In Plato’s cave are shadows dancing like hands,
A roaring fire entrances the large-eyed  
Denizens; outside, the sun broiling the sands 
Proposes truths as tough as salt-cured hide.

In Darwin’s study, texts on writing stands

Agonise that turtles or finches, pryed, 
Might flash with that chemistry at the sea’s strands
Which jostled them into being like a tide.

What reconciles? Teilhard knits Plato’s Forms

With Darwin’s murderous facts to fling a spawn
Of consciousness through galaxies; while tough
Aquinas prises things to find the norms
Of the Mover, unopposable as dawn:
For both, the Word’s transfixion is enough.
 

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© August 2013

Months: Lyrics: September

The poems for March, April, May, June, July and August in this series were posted on 14 March, 13 April, 9 May, 15 June, 11 July and 8 August 2015.

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In the grey-fog dawn, dank and greasy,
   A jackdaw cried;
A nut-snacking squirrel, anxiously busy, 
Dashed to the bushes, scorned by a cold-eyed 
   Michaelmas daisy.

Stewed by the mild sun a roadkill fox

   Is torn by a crow; 
A mid-day spider, mending the shocks
To its web, seizes a moth, silly-slow, 
   In the rusting hollyhocks.

Equinox night charcoals the woods,

   Erasing the rooks
In their elm top roosts. Woodfloor foods
Hunt and are hunted in the silent nooks 
   Under bindweed roods. 

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© September 2014

 

King Harry Redcap

'King Harry Redcap' is a traditional name for the goldfinch - a most beautiful little bird. It also has a non-stop attractive song which made it popular as a cage bird in times which I trust are now past. King Harry is, of course, Henry VIII. Like some other smaller birds, for instance the wren, the goldfinch can sing very loudly, indeed it can keep going for minutes at a time without apparently exhausting itself. I have listened in astonishment on many occasions.

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     With crimson face
     And golden wings
The goldfinch prinked on groundsel sings;      
     Its ruff of lace,
     Its toffee breast,
Ripple in the wind’s sun-hot zest.

     King Henry’s stuffs,

     Bejewelled and stiff,
Encased his pomping strut as if
     Grace were white cuffs
     And canting grin
And not this finch ablaze in whin.

     Yet once this bird

     Was caged for song
That prisoned it might thrill its tongue,     
     Make beauty heard
     Though wax unwell,       
A dismal, shabby Philomel.

     As sprinkling dew

     Its droplet call
Scatters on the wind’s busy maul;
     With a king’s hue
     And lively breath
Its freshets rinse the thistled heath.
 

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© August 2013
 

 

Months: Lyrics: August

The poems for March, April, May, June and July in this series were posted on 14 March, 13 April, 9 May, 15 June and 11 July 2015.
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Luscious as syrup | the lazy sea swelters,
Dusk descends dimly | on the viscid dull waves,
Windless, weak savours | are wearily wafted,
Harrying heat drowses | in humid hot caves. 

Assumed, a full moon | makes metal the heavens,

Bronzing the bowl | of the big-arched and bruised sky,
Highlighted cloud hefts | halo the horizon,  
A gimlet of gold | glows on the sea’s glint eye.

The Plough sinks softly | through a quicksand of stars, 

Vivid Venus | vamps in the height of the vault,
Sleepers suffer their dreams | like sandcrabs scuttling,
Night’s heat enshrouds them, | their sweat heavy as salt.          

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© August 2014