We don’t really understand
How atoms behave;
Or infinity;
Or how winds carry the seasons -
Like ‘Olde April ‘ with it’s 'showers sweet' !
Yes, I’ve felt them...
The clean stinging scent of rain
Scratching at the earth,
Pelting aromatic plants,
Condensing the smells of seas, winds, continents;
Infusing the sum of all these aromas in its perfumery,
Marketing it: April, again.
And Eliot said,
There be April,
'The cruellest month'.
Oh my (!)
Appealing April, with its sunny flavours,
Cascades of cats & dogs,
And dead-eye jack,
Firing frosts that just might spend the tender herb.
It was snowing in April,
And Easter was early, that year
When I took Schrödinger’s cat walking
On a leash, And April was still new,
And capable of shocking...
Now any month - could bring pitiless ruin.
The year annually
Out of step with migratory designs,
Throwing epithets out of its greenstick pram,
Its months in disarray ,
No-one knows what’s going on...
The drunkard earth sups up it’s own tears,
Reeling in its spin,
Until,
Saturated,
It can drink no more,
And every dip fills,
Every meadow spills,
Banks overflowing,
Its resolve drowning,
Questions washing
Up like a tide of interrogative curiosity.
OK – so I am really hiding in my acres...
At least I can tell - it’s April !
Enquiring lily-of-the-valley,
Puts up green periscopes.
Peering through the sodden grass,
The remnants of last year’s soggy leaves,
Cosset primrose & ramsons.
Daffodils are past their best, but soldier on
Like hungover squaddies,
Snowdrops have fat capsules where white drops shone,
Hellebores have been up since the crack of time -
Good movers - they could dance all spring!
Dingles are glinting green with native bluebell leaves,
And their mophead mates have muscled in the garden,
Quiet violets lounge on the field’s chaise long,
Coy, understated,
How British!
Oxlips and cowslips join the brave primroses
Who have been on the razzle for weeks.
White & purple lilac in green cassocks,
Will soon burst out
Like kiss-o-grams.
Boughs hung with clematis,
Still tiny shoots like birds on wires.
I am giving a prize for the first celandine on my patch;
Each little celandine - Rannunculus ficaria - is
A miniature sun uttering: Oi! You up there, old currant bun!
Here’s the template for a perfect summer sky !
April 2008
