May Day – the start of the long, late Spring, When early promise at last bears shoots, And the frigid world of the Winter King Is losing, day-by-day, its sting, As underground, our creeping roots Are undermining everything.
The dawns are dawning early, And the dark is in retreat – A wind of change is blowing, And to some it’s blowing sweet. The world is waking, waking, To the march of springing feet.
Labor Day, when the Summer turns cold, And all that promise, though showy, is fruitless – Or just as our efforts are harvesting gold, So they all dry up and lose their hold – As footings, once secure, prove rootless, Infiltrated by bugs and mould.
The dusk is gaining daily, And the storms are in the skies, While the chill is on the breeze And the breeze is on the rise, And the world is sleeping, sleeping, As the hoar-frosts crystallise.
Last Autumn, all your leaves came down – Just like they must each year. But seeing them when dead and brown, And unlike all the rest in town, Is just too late, I fear. I should have seen them all when green ! But now I wondered – what tree had we here ?
Big, they were, the largest, broadest leaves In all this urban wood And finger-lobed, for holding-up the eaves, And poking now from gutter-sleeves About the neighbourhood. My thought was fig, with leaves that big, Yet far too gropey to do Eve much good.
But I, alas, might never even know, For once your leaves were shed – The shears came out and brought you low, As all your branches had to go And left your trunk for dead. No tree could sleep with cuts so deep – You surely won’t be rising out of bed…
April was well underway before Your twigs began to sprout. And then, such tiny hands they bore, As ev’ry day a couple more To prove you yet were stout. At this rate Fall would claim them all Ere half the sun-grab hands were even out !
But then I looked a little lower, Where some suckers crowd the roots – While your wounds may heal the slower, Round your foot you’re still a grower Shooting out a dozen shoots. Succour feeders, weed succeeders, Sucking sunshine into fruits.
May saw plenty spindly upper twigs – A hedgehog on each bough, To carry leaves, so close, so big, As if they’d snap right off the rig, But seemed to cling on anyhow. As June grew late, they put on weight As fleshy forearms now.
By summer, something stirred in me, A memory about the bumps That swell no larger than a pea – They’re really next’s year’s fruits-to-be. But here, of course, there were no lumps – For what life stirred was secateured Down to your barest stumps.
So will I have to wait another year To see your fruits in Fall ? I wonder if I’ll still be here… You will, of course, that much is clear – You’re bursting branches big and small. Unless your twigs are lacking figs Because you never were a fig at all…
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.
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.
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 !
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.
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.
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.
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.
