Monday 17 October 2011

Easily missed seasons

I live in places where the seasons and their signs
Are not so marked.  They come and leave on quiet tip-toes.
Perhaps the thorn-tree straightens a little when spring’s declared
The scrub bush droops a bit when winter’s fangs are bared
And when autumn comes the purple-flowered, wild growing vines
Curl their leaves and learn to throw some different shadows.

It’s easy to miss the changing slant of the light
The poignant outburst of twilight is easily missed.
The shortening or the lengthening of the daylight hours
Autumn winking at me on the merry faces of small grassflowers
And it’s easy to forget the birds overhead on their long flight
Their chevrons woven into the clouds passing unnoticed.

I live in places where each thing comes and goes
Its footfalls muffled by loose sands or short grasses
Its soundless tracks might bend the blades for a minute or two
And then they spring back, as grasses will always do
The wind casually musses the sands back into the hollows,
Back to pristine like nothing has passed.  Or ever passes.

And it’s easy to miss all those who pass with a step that’s light
The cricket leaps and lizard feet are easy to miss.
And who’d want to track reptile moves on midsummer sand
When there are other, more flamboyant feet to understand?
Much easier to follow the eagle, forget the beetle’s flight
Too ungainly and irksome to merit a minute’s analysis.

I live in places where each thing knows to slink,
Flash past me fast and quiet, out of my range
Way out of my line of vision or attention span.
They leave it totally up to me to look when I can
And in that split second make up my mind, not stop to think
If I’ll let it pass, or run out and just feel the change.

1 comment:

  1. After an exhausting trip across the world, your verse ushered in a bright new day that I otherwise may not have noticed since days like this do also tend to leave on quiet tiptoes while I wait forever looking in the wrong direction...

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