1
Somewhere a pheasant calls, harsh, plaintive.
The sun throws sharp shadows of my fingers between clouds
from the northwest. A leaf hangs by a cobweb, spins in the wind.
Bushes rustle. The surrounding trees chorus our day’s business.
The night’s perfume, the stars, have given way to colour
Heat on my face and shoulder. My fleece warms on the low wall,
the Indian cushions under an exploring fly.
Beyond the washing line, the hammock, across the grass,
the half-seen folly and the unseen pond, birds sing.
In the summer room you load the camera, in the corner of my eye
you photograph the poet at work.
The wind mutters, fingering my pages, ruffling my hair,
lifting my t-shirt. Everything green or growing is touched, responds.
Heat.
I remember California. My thoughts
murmur. The air smells vegetable.
The wind pendulums the long tree-held swing like an invisible grandchild.
The sky slips to slate as it dips behind the trees, then snow, then sea.
You touch my neck as you pass. The plants, the shrubs,
dance to different rhythms in the same wind, as we do.
The tossed tree quiets: no apple falls to lie
with others on the trodden grass, among the tall, vivid daisies.
How long can this last? Winter nears.
I am relearning the seasons
ii
This panorama contains everything:
ramp to the summer room where you write tomorrow’s speech,
shining tablecloth weighted with house bricks,
sheds, trellis, woodpile and compost heap,
vegetable patch with flower pots on blue posts,
flower beds, rough mown grass to the trees,
grey oak pergola, pampas grass at the water’s edge,
hammock, swing, telegraph pole, container, parked car,
neighbours’ pink house, hedge, gate.
A small woven basket dancing as if on water;
against the networked green and brown, tree trunks or twigs,
glimpses of dancing rainbow.
A tiny insect two lines on waits for my verse,
a legged comma masquerading as a full stop.
A dried leaf skitters on the patio, cold fingers stiffen.
What is rehearsed here?
iii
The news, which we have avoided, is not good.
Yesterday we joked of Ragnarok, but a pall of smoke
covers much of Asia. The morning glories echo a past sky,
the wind is shifting to a Northerly, the trees tell
of breakers on a cold shore.
Yet it will turn. Something
will happen.
iv
Sooner or later we must go inside
where the sun, perversely, through the open door
lighting herringbone brick and a wooden chest,
and the profusion of arranged flowers
burgeoning from pots, vases, jugs, with even hanging apples,
speaking of past centuries,
argues from continuity to a future.
Beyond the kitchen window a small bird
flies up into the greenery.
Harlequin and his lover stare over the cat basket.
Music is playing in the next room.