Mar 2020
Brightness, darkness, falling both
softly from the spring-time air
teasing dormant life to growth
turning green the golden hair
of grasses dried and brittle now
to the Pleiades they bow
in thanks for rain, which brings new life
to pools and ditches, dark and rife
with strange concoctions, shadowed roots,
tendrils fine exploring through
the muddy depths to find a new
embankment where they push up shoots.
Brightness falls, the rains of spring
Closing now the season's ring.
softly from the spring-time air
teasing dormant life to growth
turning green the golden hair
of grasses dried and brittle now
to the Pleiades they bow
in thanks for rain, which brings new life
to pools and ditches, dark and rife
with strange concoctions, shadowed roots,
tendrils fine exploring through
the muddy depths to find a new
embankment where they push up shoots.
Brightness falls, the rains of spring
Closing now the season's ring.
My wife has been painting "wetscapes" recently: local scenes of ditches and swamps and streams, filled with spring rains (February is spring here). The line "Brightness falls from the air" is from a poem by Thomas Nashe, mis-remembered as "darkness falls from the air" by Stephen in James Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man".
