Sap Rising
Rooks shuffle and croak in the predawn treetops,
while incoming geese honk as they splash-down
onto the mist-wreathed lake for early breakfast:
fish rise and first walkers emerge,
the cafe and boathouse open their doors with tributes of crumbs.
And soon, the arcane call of the traveling scrap merchant
trawling the town outskirts echoes:
Any old iron! Any old iron!
stirring the marrow of the soul
with the evocative lilt of long-gone
days and ways.
Then the laggardly jackdaws,
get to jabber in the chimney pots
followed by blackbird, thrush and the garden robin
hopping n’ popping about from post to stone, spying for the early worm,
to the crooning of a turtle dove in the Laburnum.
I too, wide awake, but unable to
tromp the dawn hills anymore
celebrate and recall the times I did and could - booted, breath steaming
sloshing in the mud, scrambling up the screes
where the wild ponies lurked,
afloat, legless in the ground mist,
atop the Epynt heights.
At this time of the Ides, the outlines of the copious generic Oaks
fur and blur from spiky leafless wintry bareness
to a darkening of their tips,
like added layers of watery paint
thickening with the burgeoning life
of spring.
Mar