Late spring when we first saw the house,
with its back door a cave obscured
behind those breaking waves of blue
and white surge-foam of sweet blossom.

Bees, pollen and petals made it
difficult to weave a way in;
and in the drench of sun-showers
the water-falls of flowers purled.

Summer slowed the fall to trickles.
And since you’ve missed most of autumn,
let me say the wisteria
now is mostly air and grey cloud.

The few curved spatulas of pods
rattle like the wood-slat clackers
of a ghost-dispersing wind chime,
high against Himalayan grey.

Crumpled feathers tumbled on the waves,
Part-interred in low-tide sandy graves.
High-tides flush and dig them up again;
King-tides dump them where they will remain.

Tangled bodies salted from the surf,
Shearwaters drowned and turning into earth.
Sun and rain will soon make hollow bones
Little whistles when the west wind moans.

Within the window’s green and blue
The flame-tree’s scarlet flares like hate.
Its seed-embedded fruit pods grew
Black bats that were the summer’s bait.

Such neon-spiked display implies
Volcanic urge of savage lies
Just below the safe serene
Of seeming tranquil blue and green.

Upon the sign-post squints a crow
At every lurching butterfly,
His black eye shouts a mortal “no”
And never blinks or winks a why.

Search and seek to find this why
But never will you satisfy
The cat down-hunkered in the grass
For gentle blue birds, should they pass.

The Cossack waves came pounding in,
Turquoise horses with silver manes;
Each one charged in their line to win,
The sand interred their cold remains;

The subtle evening stole away
The late possessions of the sun
Until the jasmine’s lush bouquet
Snuffed his light and left him none;

The summer seemed so sure and strong,
Foundations poured with molten steel
That set the blue so high so long
We felt secure in our Bastille.

Each wave, each day, each season comes,
And all of them seem strong, alone,
But every single one succumbs;
Beneath each lovely face, the bone.

Every day, each moment, brings
The changes we might curse or bless,
But all the while the heart-beat sings:
“One less, one less, one less, one less.”

They speak today of pheromones and genes
When trying to account for such a state
Most often seen in young folk, in their teens
Or in their twenties, signalling a mate.
They would not think a man turned fifty-eight
Should be a candidate for such a blast
Of chemicals, or genes, or luck, or fate,
To blow him forty years back to his past.
His family and friends would be aghast
To hear their wrinkled sage bay at the moon
And warble that he’d found “the one” at last,
And call him “fool”, or worse, “romantic loon.”
But they don’t know because they were not there
To breathe the lethal darkness of your hair.