Wild white parsley
tossing in warm wind
by hedgerows thick with may;
dandelion globes on stalwart stems,
bent by overmastering gusts,
seeding reluctantly;
nettles tangled helplessly
in accelerating goose grass.
Nearing the last
of trees beginning to leaf,
an odd bare sight among
multitudinous ruffles
and deepest blossoming,
magnificent now in larger examples:
chestnut candelabras lighting
the cloud-sheathed way.
It would be easy to enumerate
the 'forty shades of green'.
May compounds April with a power of two
and flaunts it all in our faces,
like a blooming cabaret girl
gone table-wandering,
overwhelming with exponential delight.
Paired up raptors
hawks, ravens, falcons,
fly low over hedgerows,
fields, trees and roads
one following the other,
(point and rearguard).
Something is killing crows
on Bulkeley Hill approaches again.
Two more today lie slain.
The steep climb burns legs.
Rest halfway on thumbstick.
The flat hilltop is desolate.
Watch tree-heights sway in a gale,
blowing this endless grey, cloud-lid,
raging here today, this high,
having all the play, and it smarts -
too cold for mere shirts, shiver
till we run some distance down.
...
YOU ARE READING
Bare Shouldered
Poetry"The difference of high Sensations with and without knowledge appears to me this - in the latter case we are falling continually ten thousand fathoms deep and being blown up again without wings and with all [the] horror of a bare shouldered Creature...
