Love has come Again

At a halt on our path
a field-scape lies.
The sky downcasts
a beige blankness
tucked into the horizon.
It is a scene, still of movement.

Then in an abrupt cloak of berries
the sudden plumage of a pheasant
erupts from its hedgerow covert,
a most vivid proclamation
of the season’s palette.

In these silent wolds winter’s wheat
has already sprung its green blade
from the buried grain . . .
only now to wait,
to wait in the cold earth
at our feet, to wait, then flower.

Love is Come Again  the carol sings.

This is nature’s promise,
and yet hidden from sight
the story tells itself
again. And yet again
we pause and wonder
at its telling . . .
even as the light fails us
and a darkness falls
against this frigid land.




La Serenissima*

There it was, high on an outer wall
of *San Giovanni Battista in Bragora;
the church where Vivaldi was baptised.

Ruskin would surely have brought
suo scala a pioli to come close
and so sketch this tableau in relief
of Mary, her son and the Magi three.

But with il telebiettivo
its detail becomes forever mine,
and so is pinned during Advent
to my studio notice-board:

a ****** purissimo,
un bambino divine,
my Christmas gift
from La Serenissima.