Bridging

Pile Barricades Again

While Trump was doing his Trumpery,
super-spreading Covid far,
instructing staffers break the law,
re-setting lower bar,

here roses slept still in their beds,
spring blossoms twisted air;
the plums and, oh, the nectarines
opened wide petals fair.

While racists and supremacists
came gaggling to the fore
and shameful Judas 'journalists'
typed with Goebbels' mummy paw,

the midges danced in sunblond
under a cloudless sky;
the magpies crooned to soothe the curve
of evening dropping by.

For that's the way the world might end,
or how it may begin;
when we've drunk up, good my friend,
pile barricades again.

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

I left my Yeats behind this time,
so call on his Celtic ghost;
for where is Wistan Auden,
without a lyric toast?

The Toast:
May your words be short
and to the point;
and if they be ought
you buy the pint.

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

This, below, in 1973.

Moon

From one draw
grinds a dual motion:
cold stones rolling up, rattling back –
wave-brush, undertow
in disarray.

Pale face lit with another's light,
flakes in the chipped waters,
illusory fragments of dance:

the dark pulse hides
where no light reminds
of day gaieties by sharp pools
or on flats where lugworms leave their coil,

between this fall
and the back roar.