Morning Glory

‘Sunrise’ … Watercolour – WHB – 2014

Let me go
Let me run in the early dew
To brush against the laurel’s leaves
Tread the cool earth’s cushion
And linger in the dampness of the silent wood.

Before the cooing of the collared bird,
The bite of the new day’s busy-ness,
Its threats and promises,
Breaks into the stillness of my morning world
And ruptures this mood of mystery
Of thrill and almost menace,
Leaving me to face another day of reality
One more acceptance of the wrenching truth.

 

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A Summer HAIKU

Summer Garden … WHB – Sunbury 2019   ©

High Summer Season

The world is on holiday

While so many weep

 

 

 

Longing

Borrowdale – Pen Sketch WHB – 1986  © 

Yes, my youth brought many vital moments
among my native hills.
Such interludes return now
in flashback and in dreams
in vignettes and in echoes;
instances of acute sensitivity,
memories more precious and persistent
as year passes into year.

I wish I had been more alive then,
more interwoven with my surroundings,
instinctively attached to the skies above
and to the rolling landscape below.

For there, on the vast wide-open moorland
where, above my breathing,
what I heard, was only the sound of the bees
visiting the sun-yellow gorse,
and the sighing rustle of the breeze
playing amongst the curls of bracken,
the blackbirds circling above in the sundown dusk,
calls of the curlew, lapwing and meadow pipit
lost in broom , hidden in heather.

Sometimes, in the bliss of solitude’s memory,
I have known a disregard for time itself,
and I sense I would happily reach eternal slumber
in the rapturous throes of such longing.

 

Hymn Of Hope

Photo by Torsten Dettlaff on Pexels.com

When Green Hill led to Highcliff Nab
Up from Kemplah Fields, 
Then when all my world was young
And all was meant to be, 
Life was enriched by Nature’s call;
The world was one to me.

Now, when old age has taken youth
And life resolves in retrospection, 
Those childhood days become intense, 
The fount of my reflection. 

I feel, I touch, the close-knit turf
That dressed the hills I trod. 
The waves of bracken still haunt my mind
As if bespoke of God, 
And heather, clothing moor and dale,
Purpling the timeless scene, 
Rekindles every hope I have 
Been granted in the life I’ve seen.

 

Summer Rain

Photo by Matthias Cooper on Pexels.com

Summer is not rain
Nor is rain summer
But each needs the other
Cannot be without both being

Just as winter
requires the sun to shine
and display its splendour
to reflect its ice particles
into the crystal diamonds
of exuberant life
So the rain
complements the summer sun
dampening its ardour
allowing it to refresh and renew

Both asserting 
the exuberance
of a Natural heritage
wherein all
is related to all
and all is as it should be

 

© WHB:  Previously submitted in response to the prompt’Summer Rain on ‘Go Dog Go Cafe’.

A Walk Through The Woods To The Sea

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

As I breathe in the wild garlic woods
I resurrect a memory.
In bursts of fiery vision
Both eyes and nostrils
Recall the path
Descending without haste
From cornfield to woodland dell
To fern and rill
Beneath the high arches
Of the viaduct
Soft tread over the bracken-strewn turf
Beside the bubbling beck
To meet the waiting waves
On that bleached beach
Promising not only present joy
But with purpose
Though without foreknowledge
Building a cornerstone 
Of my being
Nature’s Marble Halls
Erected to sustain life
To ensure that richness of experience
This continuity of pleasure
Which brings meaning now
When I had thought
Only the memory remained

 

And the Dead Tree Gives no Shelter

Photo:  WHB … 2019

 

The tree had fallen
Rotting remains now
As the rain 
The wind 
devour its bark
Dam its life stream
Yet still it nurtures life 
Home for beetle colonies to breed
For fungi to succeed

Rotted matted carcass
This sorbate matter
Feeds a frenzy
Of insect life
Foreign matter
Now acceptable
Powdered matter
Now both home
And sustenance
Renewable energy
Nature’s liturgy

Life in Death
To turn a phrase
That has to be
Nature’s best call
Perpetuating the present
In the past
Creating a new future
In an old landscape

N.B.  The title of this poem is taken from T.S.Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’.
‘1. The Burial of the Dead’, beginning … ‘April is the cruellest month …’

The Spring Bonus

Photo by Vural Yavas on Pexels.com

You promise a delicious bonus
I wonder what joy that could bring
Perhaps, being a tell-tale romantic,
And allowing conjecture to sing, 
A cruise on a tropical ocean, 
Where mermen and mermaids will bring
Their wisdom, their unceasing love songs, 
To promise delight in the spring.

 

Spring Lives – A Reverse Cinquain

 

Photo by Jacek Mleczek on Pexels.com

New Life –

Daffodils burst from gracious earth

Golden in their splendour

Spilling their joy

– Spring Lives

 

 Reverse Cinquain:  Simply a Crapsey Cinquain in which the syllable count appears in reverse order. Adelaide Crapsey’s cinquains utilized a syllable count of 2-4-6-8-2. Therefore, the syllable count of the Reverse Cinquain is 2-8-6-4-2.

Composed in response to Abigail Gronway’s Challenge: at: https://darksideofthemoon583.com/2019/03/08/5-line-poem-challenge-6-reverse-cinquain/

As The Year Ends

WHB … Pen & Ink – 1988

Dark the swollen river runs
Under the bridge’s shades of grey.
Slate sky condemns the passive scene
Draining colour from the day.

Tree silhouettes outline my view
Their winter ribs bared to the frost
December bids the old year gone
With no regrets for what is lost. 

The year expires; bid it goodbye, 
It brought distress, re-kindled fears,
It promised much it failed to give,
Left little hope and many tears.

So now, in hope of better times,
Tomorrow holds the future’s key.
New perspectives flood my view
Blue skies as far as I can see.