Bee orchids

• 

Grass broidered
and purple-beed
beneath a true golden sun

the season turns
to humming and trilling
fluting whistling

and the trees sway
leaf-lilting gently

great green ships
on a rich sea.

Bee-loud

• 

So loud
the sound
of bees in the mimosa tree

so sweet
the scent
of honey falling

beneath
a sky
of chasing clouds

and sun
that never
quite fires
the petals of this rose.

Rain drops

It has rained and the stove
glows to charm the sun
tomorrow perhaps

while the hedge drips
where the nightingale charms
the night with drops of sun.

Spring sprigging

blossom stripped
like the day after the wedding
but oh the dandelions
sprigging the green with gold

spring bowls along
in blue-sky clouds
sails trimmed to the wind

First geese

The old man said
watch the sky
for the spring will come
on wings.

Today they came
the first geese battalion
joy in their basso profondo
flying so low
the setting sun in the delicate colours
of their feathered fuselage.

Godspeed, I shouted
waved
exulting
in their gentle majesty.

Spring cycle

The days pass
rain-filtered
dripping from unlit sky
seeping back into the sucking mud
to rise tomorrow and tomorrow
in brown pools
of spent seasons.

A spring wish

daffodil days
lemon-sunned beneath dapples
bird-quiet
rippled with water songs
and the sky pale as a new egg

I can taste the turning
in the wind-whisper
riffling soft through the drifts
of last year’s sorrows
letting them fly

Days of water

An Imbolc poem for earthweal.

Days of water
nights of rushing wind
and only thoughts of fire.

Winter runs in these cold streams,
dull browns and mud-grey,
sodden with cloud-spill.

No light, bright and sharp
as whetted steel,
no gold glints among the weeds

or the mud-stirred ditches;
winter runs still
in these cold veins,

only the birds,
finch-flicker,
colour of sunglitter and holly berries,

dance to the music of Brigid’s footsteps,
settle on the budding twig-snap
of her fiery fingers.

Hope in question

Posting this one to earthweal.

Cold comes in the answer
and snow in the wind,
furrows fill with white, while
growling incandescence consumes
branch and twig
in our invocation of the sun we have lost
in the dark night of winter.

In the morning,
the embers cold and pitted with deer tracks,
ash streams, the wind still bitter.

Ice cracks in the north
with a dark voice full of teeth,
and in the wood
a thrush is singing.

The fleeting season gone

 

The heat has come, too soon, too fierce and dry,

No time to taste the clean, brisk breeze of spring,

To watch the songbird fledglings learn to fly,

The fleeting season’s gone, bird on the wing.

Bright water rushing, tumbling down the fields

Is silent now and sluggish in the sun,

The racing torrent, fed by rainstorm yields

To drying mud, its youthful mad course run.

Already meadow flowers fade to seed,

Hay making trembles in the dusty air,

I fear for those who hide, too young to heed

The machine’s voice, in meadow’s flimsy lair.

The wheel turns, beauty gone, will summer bring

More soft nights when the nightingales will sing?