February And Beyond

Time Marches On

1 More Like It

More like it –
rain-spit and the wind fresh
sailing a gull,
seeding a dream and a shiver,
rocking groundsel towers.

How I long to launch out
beyond the scrat of circumstance -

Pheep of a whistle from the train museum,
the peer of a fly in amber...

Long thorns in my side keep me sleeping.

Blackened and thickened,
my blood is molasses.

................................

2 Don't Take my Sunshine

Let’s leave it be:
March can take care of itself,
well knows the route,
can bear all the weight
we load on it.

Yes, there are a few impatient ones:
the willow trees are playing
by their own rules,
standing out in a crowd of stately latency,
suede-ochre swell-heads leafing away
under our very noses

dusted by the yellow pollen of so many
catkins hanging their defiance high
upon tattling banks
each with their tale to tell
or tail to wag the spring.

Down by the river Weaver,
cross-waked by wind and current,
dinted by pulled-punches
from soft-assailing drizzle,

of gorse, the golden flowers
shine more abundantly
above deep straw of reeds.

A distant ice-cream van
chimes through rain-plash,
“Please don’t take my sunshine away,”
a month before the depriving cuckoo
will open her account;

and in the expanse of trees
all that variety of birdsong ventured
between slow church bells...

 ......................................

3 Off to the Offy

In robing night
along a wet and empty road,
a solitary, unsubtle engine,
raw exhaust,
125, little bike,
already gone,
carrying all before it,
and all with it too:
the prophecy of spring,
as certain as a bud,
on bursting’s verge
and as crazy as
the provenance of dream.

...........................