Black the day

Black the day of damp and squally rain
though the grass sea is still
and only the trees complain
of creaking joints

and about the house
a constant twitter of scavengers
bright-winged bright-tongued darting
from rose hips to the sad-leafed hornbeam.

Yet though the bird-mist colours
a wreath of red-blooded feathered life
black is still the cloud leaking its bellied rain
into the furrows

and the world sighs
between the loss of the sun
and the birthing of unseen roots.