Dry Rot

I have no dark and stormy night
To tell you of today,
I have no thoughts on changing light,
Or rhapsodies to birds in flight,
Or need to set the world to right,
Or clever words at play.
My pen is dry, my powder shot,
My musings down to diddly-squat,
I’ve written ev’rything I’ve got,
I’ve nothing left to say !

But say it still I shall, I must,
I will, despite a lack of thrust
And wearing out your patient trust.
I wallow in my nothingness
Until I’ve said it all.
And when I have – I know, I fear,
My chaff is trite and insincere.
It’s time to get well out of here,
Before I scrawl another mess
Upon another wall.

But never mind, I know my brain
And how it ebbs and floods.
I shall have things to write again
When westwards points the weathervane,
And dust is quenched in Summer rain
That shoots the darling buds.
And all this time I go without,
There’s movement still within the drought
As seeds blow in and wait to sprout
To yield their crop of spuds.

I do not know the when or how
There grows some fruit upon the bough,
But hark, I hear a rumble now…
There’s water rising in the wells
To wash away this clot.
I sense their sound, their breath, their key,
The ground is trembling under me.
I know not what their form shall be,
But ballads, sonnets, villanelles –
I’ll write the bloody lot !