Spring

Now west winds herald hues of emerald, time
Weaves warmer hours unwinding brighter threads
Of colour from the spools of darkness till,
Upon the perfect brink of equinox,
A new earth balances the past, with time to come.

The arc bridging two twilights broadens now,
Adjusted clocks chime notes to barter time
For light, drunk on rumours of days to come
That endless seem to children, while passing
Far too fast for those who know the way.

Liquid multiplies and emigrates to
Surfaces in plants and trees. Not long since
The sun has barely climbed day’s ladder, now,
In growing confidence, each step ascends,
Boldly, lengthening light’s span. The rhythms
Of the forests and the rivers grow.

Shards of amber beams slant taller through the
Narrowing interstices of trees. In
Dark depths earth splinters as the roots begin
To breath. Imperceptibly, each day, the
Shadows shorten, branches budding by bright
Bidding open green eyes - even urban

Precincts whisper promises of balmy
Days. The celebrating hills and valleys
Praise. The source of inflorescence flows, breaks
Brittle silence, tendrils quiver, roots drive deeper.
Arabesques unfold vivacious foliation
So foreshadowing, the summer shows to come.

Summer

In summer sometimes come Siroccos, when
Apollo’s all aflame. In northern skies

Rides Scorpius, and inflorescence drinks
The warm intemperate breath, attending days’

Widening. In the deepening postnoon
Dance bees in hives humming, later the moon,

Full of itself, guards scuffed-knuckle rose flesh
of skies as swallows reel, and all living

Creatures in night’s caresses lie among
Verdant lanes and lakes, till, in delight, light

Pours moulton ore, forges that gaze, watching
The axis of the tilting world incline.

Corinthian complexities preside,
Surmount columns ablaze with solstice pride.

From vaulting vertices, bright bugles fire
Their primary tones. Effusive rococo

Rises, breaks, supplants May’s baroque brushes,
Greets, modulates, the all too brief, long days.

On shoulders of the moorlands heather leans,
Displays her purple heart, on purple sleeves.

Autumn

Now easterlies bare light of mornings cold,
Melancholy cadences decay to shadows.
The world is polychrome - burning. Time
Bequeaths senescence, register of waning days.

Alighting on a barren branch, a blackbird sings
To church bells, calls the harvest in and city lights
Annoint, the quickening, gathering gloom
As swallows etch their paths upon a moon, magnanimous.

The mists wreath swollen vines in reverance
Of profound fecundity. Literate stems conduct
Dimming voices of drowned light.
A girl, windswept, weeps gold and amber jewels;

Opalescent eyes shining in mirror leaves.
Migrants wheel against an arching sun to
Trace their sentient scripts on canvases
Of luminous clouds and seas whose gothic grammar

Fortells the fearful immanence of transcendence.
Inscrutable scribes trace manuscripts.
Starfish shoal brightly into nets of gloom.
Persephone presides over grain and

Pomegranites, whirling gales curve waves,
As curling clouds subsume a bloodless sun.
Peering past drifting drapes, she oversees
The supremacy, of secondary hues.

Winter

The midnight of the year looks north from where
White geese and swans appear, lakes, furrows freeze
And wilderness proclaims the reign of dormancy.

While inside fires stir stories and their tellers
Fanning embers to realities from
Memories and imagination, cooking

Vital nourishment for fortifying souls,
Implacable black, immemorial
Seas roar outside. Columns of mercury

Collapse, all life retracts, all things withdraw
Reduced to kernels in themselves.
Amorphous skies, portentous, gather grey.

On clear nights loud stars beat their drums of light.
Silent under white cloaks of snow and frost the
Iced earth’s gaunt embrace holds living creatures

In their lairs immured and barely breathing
Beneath the frozen furrows’ arabesques.
Salted meats, fermented fruit, potted purple

Jams sticky and sweet as kisses, wait.
In the cellar: crocks and glass jars stacked
For festivals’ and celebrations’ sake.

The nadir of the cycle curates
The sculptor’s work of alabaster, white
Veined marble, like facades of Italy.

Dry yellow leaves crack under footfalls, birds
Abandon trees and time slows to arctic
Glacial pace. Janus-faced, the year’s dawn’s poised

Between remembered scenes and dreams foreseen,
And fears. Grey eyes mourn colours in pale tears.

The Anarchist in the Sky

Hear this, humanity, whose souls love light:
Stay in your natural house, the heart of doubt.
Though systems break, never recourse to flight,
But rise within, balanced, by fall without.
As ever fortresses are swept aside,
Of sands, and clouds are formed to break apart;
Toil’s tiers to summits’ flags are washed by tides,
All destinations woven of their start.
Each curving wave of particles competes.
This revolution’s permanent, you said,
When, factory-forged, my ice-pick found your head.
So matter’s forms unfold from folded pleats.
My non-existence is my sole excuse,
And faith will never be, where there is proof.

Roundee Redoublé

She smiled at me by Girné quay today.
The sun-bright sea boats, stately refugees.
The mermaid sings, sighing beyond the bay:
‘Mere human souls forsake the open seas’.

Now morality’s, for most, live as you please
And work the unmentioned relative of play.
Can anyone arrest life’s falling leaves?
She smiled at me by Girné quay today.

When feelings froze and chaos chose to stay,
The broken stones recorded heresies.
‘Always this life will be’, I hear him say.
The sun-bright sea boats, stately refugees.

Untended olive groves lean in the breeze,
Ungathered lemons sour sweet beds of May.
When moments’ precious lives we fail to sieze,
The mermaid sighs, singing beyond the bay.

Will ever faith in truth our storms assuage?
Is love locked out and cannot reach the keys?
To see beyond our sight is heaven's praise.
Mere human souls forsake the open seas.
                           She smiled at me.

But

Dissolving sea souls sing in burning spray,
In notes ascending, orchestrate the bay

Life particles sink below, no more discerned -
To rise as flowers of earth, resolved, reformed

In dimmest wood the quietest bird reserves
The glory of the song for those who'd hear.

The Drink

A sea strung necklace buoyed nearby the shore
Soul globes, some sunken, half-submerged, yet more
Afloat, rise on the steady current's crest,
Tugged by the trough to fall, never at rest.

The sea became a fading drape of smiles
The sky-freed light fed low illumine'ed flowers
I watched the crinkled cloud edge tinge with pink
And poured her, then myself, another drink.

Light

Below lights linger. as the laughter falls,
The sky resigns, soft rose to dark inclines
As waiters watch for arms to rise, accounts to call.

Where evening stars are tears set fast in stone
And waning smiles were boats for rowing home,
The cyprus trees soar, silhouettes by ancient walls.