And birds have ceased to call  

When nighthawks glide through misty glades   

And fiery Mars comes up from shades

When fireflies blink and crickets wheeze.

and deer cough deep and owls sneeze  

The sky spreads its carpet of myth

Up ending Orion,

while I, sitting on a stone,

move the branch into the glow and wait   

‘til tousle haired, he brings dazed frogs, which,

steamed with greens, and pungent spice,  

we serve on leaves with sticky rice

and eat with bamboo shots.  .

Nyok!

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In just two weeks, the greening ghyll

Hides naked shame in mystery,  

The bluebells darken, the chestnut shakes its spears,  

the butterburr is over and bees visit the comfrey.   

In just two weeks, the screaming swifts

claim the skies, blackcaps chatter

in the leaves and the cuckoo returns

slack-winged to the windy walls.   

In just two weeks, the red faced blots

Of soot, that raced across the pond   

And piped insistently for roots,  

Have grown to police their conscientious plots.     

In just two weeks, the sulphur grey wagtail

brings no more flies to the demanding moss,

But shows his shorter tailed charges how

To hawk by the falling water.     

In just two weeks, the newborn lambs

Shivering on their fragile heights,  

Run in their grassy gangs, bleat with glee 

And butt their last-drop ewes.

And in just two weeks,  my dear mother who

Long nursed her loneliness in querulous complaint,

Has left her anxious quests and floated free, her mind    

Abandoned in a bed boat of intensive care.

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where the Blackbird’s beguiling flute

stirs the heavy scent that lingers

across the trance of summer’s eve.

April has lain a fragrant quilt

over the moss that clothes

the limbs and secret belly

of the darkening wood.

Nodes of eager bracken thicken, uncurl

and thrust through cobalt covers.  

Subversive tubers reach into damp hollows

that reek with the sex of garlic.

An owl hoots!  Leaves burst free from swollen buds    

Then the dark roebuck, his mission complete,

withdraws silently across the blue shades

while verdant canopies stretch out to hide his shame.

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