Introit
First light
of spring's first day.
On the sliding glass doors
of my blue house
colours garnered, it seems,
from endless orchards
of pomegranates,
tangerines.
The wind blows as if it means to be
felt, to be heard,
veers every which way,
all edge, all flow,
riddles and riffles
the winter-honed leaves.
What messages are hidden
in the balm of this wild wind
that might deliver us
from ourselves, and to ourselves
in times such as these –
so much of Earth's life
at the mercy of drought, fire, ice-melt,
of plagues, ancient or new;
in times such as these
when it can seem
we don't know who
we are, or where we are going.
Back in the present moment,
here,
the first yield ever of limes,
the lemon tree speaking, too,
and on the ageing apricot tree
one blossom.
A blackbird I know
lands on the back fence,
the curled plume in her beak
irradiated –
its glory a momentary
fact about the world –
then lifts into the leafy
deeps, nest bound.
Late Spring Gardens
Rain falls on the Botanic Gardens,
its commonwealth of leaves,
almost unseen
but with force enough to be heard.
Many sounds, one sound.
On the Japanese Barberry,
its trunk half-eaten by ticks,
the bone of heartwood exposed,
ant trails ascend through
a long papery wound.
High up, in wreaths around
the boughs, yellow flowers
like pollen magnified,
and wreathing around them,
the bees, creating
as they work, a bee-voice,
a sonorous descant on the rain.
An atmosphere of harvest,
of nurturance, of damage,
carried on the air I breathe.
Later, at home, Bach will be waiting,
and other composers of silence,
of the movements of the soul,
small or epochal,
that would be traced, re-enacted
in closed rooms over centuries,
and sometimes in the scented
rooms of spring from where,
sometimes, bees could be heard
and faint, solacing rain.
In my own garden
the semibreves on the climbing rose
will harbour daylight, still;
the bees, soon to go home
or fall asleep in flowers.
Drifting out through the screen door
a cello suite will weave itself
around the leaves, the washed-pink
roses, the sturdy trunks,
each step I take a springboard
towards night, towards a new season
of lightning-seeded blazes
planted in ancient forests,
of ever more life in flight
as we approach the summer years.
Hold to the days of grace,
enter their brimming, humming air.
Amid rumours of flame
wait at midnight windows for
cool winds from Antarctica.
____________
Diane Fahey is the author of thirteen poetry collections, November Journal the most recent. She has won major poetry awards, and has received literary grants from the Australia Council. Her poetry has been represented in over seventy anthologies. Diane holds a PhD in Creative Writing from UWS. dianefaheypoet.com
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