Nature
Birds, butterflies, flowers, sunsets, weather.
All the clichés. 😎👍
The Null
The world ceases
In cold cathode blueness
In a tactile void
Beyond an unruly queue
Of straggly bushes and grasping pines
If I were to walk
Into that valley of nothing
Would I be enveloped
In uncoloured, yielding blancmange
Or would it disperse before me
In smoky spirit circles like Hammer horror miasma?
Unwilling to experiment
I observe from under the eaves
And wait for the rest of the world
To knit itself anew from the null.
Abundance
There is abundance in the bright air.
Intoxicated borboletas
Stagger, wobble and flutter through the blue
From bud to blossom to bloom
Uncurling an unfeasible tongue
Desperately questing, prodding, dipping, diving
One last slurp of sweetness
One for the shining road.
Homebuilding hoopoes hunting down hair,
Haphazard wainscoting for cracks in cliffs
To house their noxious, noisome chicks
Grasping grapnel beaks agape for arachnids
Happy, safe and secure in their own muck.
The solemn nonsense of their mother’s call
Is echoed by her permanent punk surprise.
There is abundance in the forest morning.
Hordes of orchids:
Early purple, naked man, three toothed,
Serried ranks of Kerry lilies,
Flotillas of Scilla monophyllus,
German chamomile and crocus-leaved romulea.
Some names, exotic or everyday, words outside experience
Were uncovered here, my sylvan education
Mere footsteps from the middle of nowhere.
The forest doesn’t recognise or intuit
This complicated taxonomy,
This human need for naming,
Just gets on with the job of
Encouraging, coaching
Abundance.
Staring Contest
On a chartreuse pond
Ribbed like a poison bottle
The crowd waits, all breath bated
For the other competitor
To blink.
This Should be Beautiful
The sun is a stark, searing eye
Staring down from a gloss paint sky
The gravel path crunches underfoot
Pistachio, staccato
Restless water yawns and stretches
On either side
Flamingos sieve and dredge
Black-winged stilts creep, pantomime villains
This should be beautiful
But the dread of a raptor
Darkening from above
Curdles the narrative.
Weather Warning
A bloody-minded wind bullies its way
Through the crowding Blair Witch trees
With grannies’ jumble sale elbows
Pushing to the front to boast of the tempest first.
The roof tiles rumble and rattle tonight
Sleep’s fall will not come easy at all
And it will rain like Noah’s nightmare.
Marmóris
This is the stroboscope of summer
Of stop-framed wings in silent clamour
Stark against sipped chicory blueness
Or bramble blooms blushing mauve
Never was marble so light and flighty
So hesitant, so weightless
A Sudden Fall
It was unexpected
One minute it was picture perfect
Blue, blue skies and too-bright sun
Butterflies and bees competing for nectar
The land bone dry brown and gasping
The next
Rain was Clem Burke drumming on the roof
In perfect time, relentless rapture
Indefatigable until the early hours
When grey morning awoke and rose slowly
Birds
There were birds everywhere, out for breakfast
Avoiding the rain under branches
Previously used to shy from the sun
And the oaks
Yesterday fully clothed, heavy with green
Today find themselves practically naked
A sudden fall.
Unrepeatable
Some apprentice alchemist
Left the sky in an unwatched pot
And turned it to gold
Accidentally
Try as she might
She can't repeat the results
Unrepeatable
Some apprentice alchemist
Left the sky in an unwatched pot
And turned it to gold
Accidentally
Try as she might
She can't repeat the results