Mercy
The dawn is wide with light,
the air tall as the last faint star
at the edge of night
I watch the quiet sun
lift full over fields
where the broad corn moves
green as the garden
here at my feet.
I hear unstrung
the peace of a great morning,
shorten my sight
to the wall where the wrens flit,
quick with the seed
I have spread for them.
Day lurches
and they are gone,
piercing the curtain of willow,
their fear sharp as cut flint.
I wait and will time to a standstill
Dull hope crawls to a slow ache.
I turn back to the house,
my hearing tuned
to the dance of the day behind me,
to the wrens who return,
as they always do,
filling the world's long silence
deeper and higher,
with their vast chant.
Judgement
'This and that,'
I wrote last night.
I'd flitted from dusting
to washing to watching,
tried counting the clouds,
tried reading them,
condemned the dry weeds,
pruned, mowed, hoed.
My garden was parched
under the dry clouds.
I watched them bunch
over the buddleia's reach,
felt for a drift of rain
in the slow air.
Where was It, then,
'Not this, not that?'
'Now,' it decreed,
washing the dust from the path.
'This and that,' it went,
'This and that, this and that.' |