The few ripe blackberries
hidden under rust-spotted leaves
on the bright-red bushes
are small and tart.
Silver drips, on each pine-needle end,
shine with soft cloudlight... fibre-optic
splat on raincoat and cell-phone screen;
and yet Bertha seems quite fled
regaled hurricane now wind-dragon.
"The pines are still
this morning roared in dread,"
from every quarter vociferous pigeons report:
"She's moved on. She hoofed it.
to Cumbria by now. Good news."
But even as they reassure,
the least lash of a talon
soughs through tall tops
and sways them in a long wave.
"More wind in wood. Look out!"
Sunlight returns and dreamy dapples
brown-needled, pine-coned floor
with criss-cross of long trunk-shades.
Thirty yards away it rains;
yet we are dry but for drips,
reminding us of privilege.
Sun at our backs the maze
of light and shade forever draws us on,
somnambulant, revenant,
all the way to our terminus
of the big swing on the sand hill,
for whose exhilaration
we wait a turn and empathize,
take a turn, experience;
and give away the rope,
sympathetic, to the next hoper.
On the way back, we stray,
outside the pine hollows,
down sunfilled lane, lined
with bramble bushes more profuse
and generous. We browse
the late afternoon away,
un-nettled, dab handed,
purple tongued with blegs*
while we hear the wind again
rush in swathes of waves.
Wind-dragons can be very long,
creatures of time as well as form,
from morning thresh-thrash plying,
down to the constant blow and bow
of whole tree, the rush-raw leaf-batter
of an avenue of limes,
golden in the raking light of late,
before the clouds are bloodied.
Grey heron blown off course
(a middle-aged lady struggling
with an umbrella
bent near to catastrophe);
her keel redeems her.
A big disc of straw moon looms
up by farm gate, driving home.
...................................
*blegs - a common (maybe northern) name for blackberries
YOU ARE READING
Keep The Home Fires Burning
PoetryA poetry Collection. Now Lunk has taken to his bed, swearing not to write one more word about C, and muttering 'bloody garden', it behoves (Love that word, don't you?) me (and Anima) to fill out his shoes, with soil and flower seed. So we will be 'e...
