Spring Equinox

The hours between have become equal 

again, balance has been restored.

Had we forgotten to see in anything

other than monochrome, surprised by

the new colours creeping back into

the world, the unaccustomed sounds?

The songbirds that chorus not just

the daybreak but the hours until

they nestle, reluctantly, rustling

in the treetops, the hedgerow, woken

by the bright bursting through of

the tulips that mark the rousing the 

season makes of us, feeling again

the lasting wound that is our lot 

while we wait on the burning cross,

the suffering it bears by way of 

reminder that while the pain is 

enduring, there remains the waking 

to a morning made fresh, anew.

It Is a Season of Mist

It is a season of mist, one 

in which we practise the 

language of loss we share.

Finding commonality, a shared 

vocabulary. In its absence 

are we lost without the 

coherency of grammar to 

guide us? Lacking identity? 

Insufficient, like the 

words with which we would 

express ourselves, and 

weather the season? 

Or questioning, always.

Seeking definition, the 

outline the absence leaves.

This Is the World Then

This is the world, then, heard, 

but not seen. Slipping through.

The noisy Nuthatch, shy whisper 

of the Chiffchaff unwilling to

expose itself to the camera,

the clinical gaze that might be 

able to identify the song, but 

not interpret the melody, explain 

the mechanics of flight, but not 

appreciate its beauty, hear

the voice, glimpse the face,

but only rationalise its poetry 

in the prose of moss and bark,

substituting for wonder the conflicted 

light of a dawn that presumes 

to represent itself as eternity.