In Ravenwood
How the dark sky picks out evergreens today,
and ivy, lagging bare trees in a Jack of Plates.
Catkins in abundance, induviae of winged seeds,
and curled up crisps of mummied leaves
cannot mask a thickening of buds and swelling twigs,
slow growth with which trees sweep their air anew,
Gradualists - and taking their time about it, too -
but visibly, spring’s slow match has been lit
bare gestures pregnant with hidden meaning:
a drama renewed, a yearning reconnected.Across the plain that dark cloud-floor
runs in threatening parallel with inked hills.
Today a stream runs down the path to Ravenwood -
mud clogs, deep in hollows, flat impassibilities.The air eagerly nips our hands that grasp on
stick and staff and cell-phone. In the Cave of
the Oath-breaker it is warmer, much brighter
at deepest recess than our midwinter visit.
We stand in our own thoughts, I... I
remembering your empty declarations.Disgorged again, the spindly, towering
birch wood is golden-boled, and fields
beyond, too, gilded all the way to blue horizon,
sun smiling slyly over my left shoulder
through ivied trunks high on the slope;
and holly tries to tell us something:
deep peace of synthesis beneath
its waxen leaves, sun finding leanings.Jackdaws are uneasy, chuckling and rattling
as raven lunges over, out, across scored fields
and wind stirs birch tops - circular mixers............................
Night
A fattening moon,
within this cloud’s
chromatic halo,
yet aching far.From maria
stamped
upon her lava
bandaged face,
a haunched wolf
now looks sidelong.Something glitters
near bright stars
that will not be eclipsed,
extending a scaffold
for disquieting
illusions of contiguity.Orion’s belt rides up,
canted, above a swathe
of moonlit cumulus.......................
YOU ARE READING
February And Beyond
PoetryThis ark will take me through to springtime - 'the pretty pretty ring time'.