Our Finest Belonging

 

Sorolla - The Siesta

When we lay there, our bodies were grass,

a sea of meadow, the sweep of wind carrying

us along, flowers of rye. We, the droning

bumble bees in buttercups; we, the chirruping

finches, chomping cattle; darting suddenly

within briary hedgerows, rustlings, commotions

and hunters’ silences; and only vaguely conscious

of the faraway cataracts of traffic.

How sumptuous the flow of light and warmth;

how sinuous our bodies in that current,

the colours of the field embroidering our bodies.

We, agglomerations of the soil; we, the criss-crossing

zeniths of nerve and muscle: the fields risen on legs

now part of the swathes of breeze-blown beauty,

settled, nested into our finest belonging.

Spears of Mountain Grass

 

Spears of mountain grass bronze tipped

and edged, grading to gold, to green;

tufts splayed like ceremonial headdresses,

gleaming in the already golden sunlight,

resplendent.

Bowled over by the glories I’d missed,

with narrower eye, I see patches of azure sky

along the track, yellow-green grasses combed

smooth by rushing flood water in culverts,

silver-glinting mica in the siding rocks,

magnificent.

Beneath the mountains, the rain-reflected gleam

of low sun into my eyes is a celebration

of the bejewelled growth along the wayside,

the play of light, water and mountain breezes

dizzying, fire-working my senses into exhilaration,

and profound joy.

Fireweed, Montbretia, Swallows and Me

It is past mid-August, and the year, measured in flowers, is turning.

The foxgloves gone, they blackened quickly, followed the iris, that

followed the garlic out of season.

Now that fireweed floods the roadsides with carnivals of colour,

the bonfires of montbretia are raging gloriously out of control

and swallows have become skittish, flying broken circles about the house,

we enter the season of apples, pears turning red, plums purpling.

Yearly, I get this feeling of sadness as though programmed into the cycle;

it’s not the passing of beauty; beauty just changes its cloak; it’s time

running away with something that I can never quite identify.

A Poor Man Offers Unlimited Treasure

It’s a paltry thing that sparkler on your finger,

when, on a sunny morning, I will present you

with ten miles of dazzling lake almost to the door.

Or an emerald, when my house is sitting at the bottom

of blazing green fields, and the same all the way to the sea,

two counties to the west, three to the east.

Or amethyst, when the boreen is crowded with foxgloves

ringing their bells for the attention of bumble bees who’ll be losing

their heads in nectar from May to September.

Or rubies, when the hedges are brimming with myriad constellations

of fuchsia; even the ash, high on the hill, outshines them with its harvest

of late evening sun gathered in sprays of blood-bright berries.

And that gold bangle on your wrist, how dull it will look beside the daffodils

under the beech trees not a hundred yards from my house, or June’s irises

with blooms like laughter among the flaggers opposite Scanlon’s old shed.

Over by the privet hedge, you’ll have all the pearls you could wish for

come the end of January; snowdrops, promising the year’s beauty,

will be yours every January, if only you’d come live in my cottage.

Seeing

Walking along a country road,

I spot, ahead of me, a bird with brilliant plumage;

closer: a foxglove broken double.

I see ash trunks ‒ giraffes’ necks,

a stand of ferns ‒ green flamingos standing one-legged,

a million yellow butterflies hovering above a meadow ‒ buttercups.

Then, straining to see something extraordinary

in everything; I quite suddenly see

everything is extraordinary.

Old Lovers

Mountain and cloud are coupling again;

mountain haunches pressed into cloud stomach;

cloud taking mountain’s contours, moving slowly,

driving slowly all the day.

Old lovers familiar with each others’ bodies;

the touch and feel,

the graceful flow of their love-making

blurring into ecstasy.

Stream

              

                       Sinuous,

          the stream weaving braids:

 its muscles,

               solving the puzzles

                       set by strewn boulders,

              runnelling down geologic time.

Always motion; plaits,

      light and water indivisible,

               streaming moss, cloud, over-hanging bush;

                                  quietude or turbulence

                          on the whim of a sharp edge,

                                    creating music

           from the shiftings of time.

New Poem-Nature is Music

Following on from the last post,  this is one of the new poems.I'm using it as an introduction to the piper's music, the music of nature.

Music is a stream

whose fingers, knuckling over boulders,

send droplets trickling into crevices, tinkling;

gurgles bass notes in hollows beneath the rocks,

spills soprano trills

that burst into the white noise of spray.

Music is the wind

that whistles high notes in the leaves

low in a bowl of mountain-side;

that whistles sad through a stone wall;

laughs in a stand of nettles.

Music is all that stirs on the earth;

the blackbird standing on the morning

trout etching circles at noon

raucous crows bickering with evening

a fox tearing a hole in the night-time.