Category: Seasonal

Song of Summer

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butterfly girl
Luna, Goddess of the Moon by Donato Giancola

Song of Summer

Summer makes the Spring give way to her,
She makes the roses purr,
The strawb’ries blush, the bubbles grin,
As Summer brings the Summer in.

Summer makes the Spring her sideman,
Summer takes the stage by thunderstorm,
Her beaches swarm, her waltzers spin
As Summer brings the Summer in.

Summer makes the Autumn wait his turn,
But still the year must churn,
The days must short, the rains must spout
As Summer sweeps the Summer out.

Summer always comes again,
When Summer takes possession of the sky –
Her dragons fly, her birds give song,
As Summer shines all Summer long.

Suburban Antares

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opposite of mars
Image crested in Stellarium

Suburban Antares

Right at the bottom of the Zodiac, he lies –
At the bottom of the garden, at the bottom of the sky –
Barely rising high enough above the privet hedges,
As he’s hugging the horizon – just a hello and goodbye.
Battling through the light-infested night (plus those long evenings),
Peeking out from skies that are perpetually grey –
From the top floor of a tower block, I bet he looks a treat,
But for us, he’s always hidden by the roofs across the way.

Harvest Song

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nature sky field summer
Photo by freestocks.org on Pexels.com

Harvest Song

Reapers sweep the scythe
And sheafers bush the sheaf –
Gathering the harvest,
Gathering the grain –
Threshers thresh the flail
To tear the seed from leaf –
Gathering the harvest,
Holding off the rain –
Winnow-women winnow,
And siever-maidens sieve,
Prizing out the pearls
That the golden ears give –
For to the corn we’re born,
And by the wheat we live.
Bringing home the harvest down the lane.

Once it took a village,
And ev’ry boy to spare –
Gathering the harvest,
Stooked and ricked and mown –
Now it takes machines,
With no use for man or mare –
Gathering the harvest,
Gathered to the bone –
Children of the corn
And cottage-kitchen wives
Are spared the broken backs
And spared the broken lives,
With Summers never shorn
By the sweeping Reaper’s scythes –
So bring us home the harvest on your own.

Cucumber Time

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pile of cucumbers
Photo by Matthias Zomer on Pexels.com

Cucumber Time

Summer days, ah Summer days,
When the world is out-of-town.
The Commons and Courts are resting,
And the news is old and brown.
When gherkins are smooth and longer,
And the sunbeams are making them glow,
Then just ask Jack and Algernon
How quick the sandwiches go !

Harvest Traffic

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Harvest Traffic

Country roads in Summertime,
Tractors bar the way –
Trailers towering with loads
Astride the hedged-in roads, all long-the-day.

Gathering the harvest in,
Kicking up the dust,
Making ev’rybody late –
Because the corn won’t wait, and so we must.

Scattering a constant shower,
Unintended sacrifice –
Stripped from golden fields,
Their yields are fattening the harvest mice.

And we shall gobble up the rest,
The bread and beer and morning flakes –
So patience, as we fume to pass,
And thank them by the glass and loaf and cake.

For that’s the price of country living,
Farmers have to move their grains –
They fuel, with slow agronomy,
The whole rural economy down twisty country lanes.

Summer Begins at Midsummer

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silhouette of trees during golden hour
Photo by Lisa Fotios on Pexels.com

Summer Begins at Midsummer

When the cuckoo changes his tune, it’s June,
The month with the longest afternoon,
When the golden hour will last an hour,
And the floral clocks are forever in flower –
It’s hardly worth the daisies to close
When a good night’s sleep is barely a doze,
And the nightingales must rush their glee
Till the sparrows peep at the crack of three.

The Longest Day of the Year

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stonehenge england
Photo by John Nail on Pexels.com

The Longest Day of the Year

She was born at Solsticetide,
And so they named her Summer –
Blond and bright and beautiful,
And all the Spring a comer.
But once the longest day was done,
She felt the nights draw in,
Just waiting for the Winter low
To let the next begin.

Now I will barely notice how
The evenings have crept,
Until the clocks have messed about
To show how dusk has leapt.
But then, she saw a greater change
Than I, from day to day,
For she grew up in Lerwick town
And I down Jersey way.

The Other June

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verge

The Other June

June is full of unexpected flowers –
We shouldn’t be surprised at such,
We know these buds exist in theory,
But we never think of them that much.
I don’t mean roses or hydrangeas,
Where the blooms are solely why they’re bought –
But rather in the offhand places
Where the flowers are an afterthought –
The lively sprays of privet blossom, say,
Or potato’s multi-coloured spawn,
Or dead-nettles with snakeheads raised,
And teasing frills of clover on the lawn.
For ev’ry showy thug like bindweed,
There’s small-and-many thyme and poison ivy –
Where oxeyes lord it over the daisies,
The plantain spikes are defiantly lively.
A shock of yellow in the verges,
Wastelands looking oddly brisk and bright,
And brambles showing their softer side,
While shy little sundews and chickweeds fleck with white.
They don’t do it for us of course,
These unassuming emissaries –
And we’ll forget, then be surprised again
By the Autumn’s unexpected berries.

April Love

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clyde
Shipping on the Clyde by John Atkinson-Grimshaw

April Love

It rained the day I met you,
It poured the day you left.
And truth to tell, the drizzle fell
From rapture to bereft.

You deluged, and I let you,
Then you stormed right out my door.
And as you swept, the heavens wept
In tawdry metaphor.

My memories are wet through,
My hope is all washed out.
I do not need the sky to bleed:
My tearducts face no drought.