Nothing much happens.
Life's gone underground.
Absence of butterfly and bee.
On the pond — brimful of rain —
whirligig beetles ever decrease
in ever-decreasing circles.
One last water lily
fails to open
yet refuses to die.
Earthworm casts
stipple the lawn
like cairns —
portals into a nether world.
Fungi are alien invaders.
Toadstool parasols wave
in the woody air.
Trees shrug and shiver off
their leaves, paring back
to the bare bones of things.
Each brittle leaf
drifts down, goes limp.
The plum tree's bark —
ploughed and ridged
as a strip lynchet.
Leaf litter
rustles with blackbirds —
every bill a golden promise —
and a slanting sun
slices a blue
parabola of sky.
6 comments:
Beautiful, Robert. The detritus of autumn is vivid in your poem, ending so liltingly and satisfyingly with that parabola of sky.
I'm glad you like it, Ruth. It started out as a piece of prose last night, but ended up as a poem this morning.
Solitary…
Yes, indeed—much improved. I knew there was a poem—and a good one!—lurking in the post's previous form.
(I attempted to send this comment earlier via my phone, but don't think it worked. If it did, just discard.)
Thanks, Grizz! Your approval means a lot to me.
This is lovely. Especially as I don't know what a strip lynchet is, and I don't want to be told, the sound and the imagining is most enjoyable.
Thanks, Dritanje!
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