Writing on the Wall

I’m tender with
the soft wind
parting and folding
the young Beach,
and bend
touching the leaves
ribbed underside.
Lay in your hands,
soft as the baby
leafs new down.
 
Am damp in turbulence
with indigo clouds,
dishing their weight
above fields sliced lemon,
with oil seed rape.
Line myself between
the sculpted ridges
of earthed up spuds.
 
And I with the hot land
ache for wet suffusion,
to fill full the crazy fissures
splitting round the corn
and winter wheat.
 
I’m in the crumbly dark
with seed potatoes,
yearning to spill
their tubers into
small white pearls
between my fingers.
 
I’ll push up
in their green fuses
and ignite with sun,
and know again the rains
hot pleasure on my face.

Irregular bent and dry
a pale corolla of
leaves and stems,
fold one into another.
White beaks wove it
with the urgency of Spring,
the Coot pair bob
through water weeds,
reeds and Ladies Smock.
 
She a black incubating eye
crowning her bed,
sat central on the pond.
Hot afternoons
her four white eggs
are given over to
the sun for nurturing .
 
The nest
a lidless vacant stare
without the iris of
her  pineal presence.

If I could send
first sounds
on Sunday,
you’d hear
ice hiss
melting dawn sun,

grass stick-lick
a boot frost sole,
and ear to pillared
tree trunk,
soft chords chime,
as red stems
rub together.

Sheep bleat,
mists drape a
dream-pallor
and whisper up
a pools white breath.

Sun-rays slant
through hedges,
the chit-chat bird-bar
tuning in our day,

and city sounds
that skirt the week
are crumpled,
silent at my feet.