POETRY

Readers looking at this website on a small screen or mobile phone:

 For the best experience, it is recommended that you hold  your device so that

 the screen can be viewed  HORIZONTALLY.

Here's a selection of my poems for SEPTEMBER 

I update this website at the start of each month with a fresh selection of my poetry.   

PLEASE VISIT   HOME  (click the HOME button) for my poetry news... and a special announcement.       

(The control button is usually situated at the BOTTOM right of the screen on portable devices)

Wheatfield with crows -  Vincent Van Gogh ( 1853 - 1890 )

SEPTEMBER

In clustered bales are held the seasons’ days –
Formed through the year, now turned to autumn’s hay.
Summer’s still not done, though flowers fade,
Blood red poppies here and there still show
Before the gold of autumn starts to glow
From hedgerows and tall trees –
This is September.

LAST REUNION

Each evening, when late August sun was low,
they’d come to check the field behind the house —
impatient for the harvest to be done.

They’d circle, honking, just above the ground
and, when the crop was in, on stubble field
touched down in ones and twos, small family groups,

skeins, silhouetted by the setting sun.
Leaving each morning, they’d return at dusk
for a noisy reunion every day…

And every year the pattern was the same :
they’d stay a week or so and then move on
to over-winter many miles away.

This year, when geese had gone, men came with plans :
theodolites cast shadows over land.

STRANGE FRUIT

From the dining table we could see them:
two magpies on a horizontal branch,
strange fruit, sitting in that distant tree.
They were often there, September tea times,
taking short flights, but always returning
to sit together in their chosen spot.

Today was different. One magpie flew down
to land in long grass and pick up a stick.
Flying towards its perch, the stick was dropped.
Directly, it flew down to retrieve it —
yet, mid-flight, the stick was dropped again.
This strange behaviour was repeated,
with the stick plummeting down several times.

Now, curious, we left our meal to watch
and could see quite clearly that the “stick”...was not!!

...as it slithered to its haven in long grass.

BLACKTHORN

Our blackthorn has been wonderful this year,
each hedge I passed seemed blanketed in snow.
The trees, like white sails, billowed over lanes
and verges… and the celandines’ bright show.

A gusting wind sprang up to shake the hedge,
bending the trees to rock them to and fro,
releasing blossom in a blizzard fall,
surprising horse and rider just below.

As drifts of snow-white petals filled the lane
the parting clouds revealed a watery sun;
although the signs of Spring were in the air,
the cold wind warned that Winter’s not yet done…

Now, seasons on, the hedge bears blue-black sloes,
as bitter as that wind from long ago.

WINDFALLS

In this, the Autumn of her life,
Windfalls.
Mossed tree — planted to mark her birth —
has grown too tall,
with fruit too high to reach.
Each day she waits for wind and sun
to bring her windfalls down.

And life has always been like this —
spent tending to the fallen fruit :
both parents, husband, then her son
had tumbled from the family tree,
been rescued after falling low
like windfalls — bruised but whole.

                                                   ROSE : The Poet's Wife

SEPTEMBER HARVEST
For Lynn’s Special Birthday

 
All nature’s bounty comes with sunny days:
from hedgerows sloes, blackberry, hips and haws,
while ripening on the trees around West End
hazel, chestnut, apple, plum and pear.
For weeks your flower harvest has brought joy:
white phlox and roses, agapanthus blues,
hydrangea, cosmos and anemones…

From kitchen garden vine tomatoes, beans.

Yet now’s the time to harvest more than plants —
your birthday’s here, it’s time to garner years!   

SUNFLOWERS

Few noticed that surprising change —
the grassland gone where larks had been,
poppies and vetch lost to the plough —
a new crop planted in neat rows
that soon grew strong and tall and green.
Puzzled, the lonely walker paused
to find a clue to what grew here —
each passing day the new buds swelled
until, in early morning sun,
the nature of the crop was clear…

Sunflowers broke in ones and twos,
lifting their faces to the sky
till quickly, as the week went on,
their patch of land burned like the sun,
a golden multitude on high.

Across the valley, from the hill,
this splash of yellow light appeared
as golden faces tracked the sun…
And people came from all around
to stand in wonder and be near.

Within two weeks the crowd had gone
as flowers wilted in the rain,
their golden petals stripped by wind;
October saw each face turned down
as if lost beauty caused them pain.

Gaunt, grey stalks in November frost,
seed heads rattled by fierce, short storms,
the landscape bleak, the days grown short —
few passers-by would now be seen —
though some recalled when days were warm…

These visitors soon found this site —
remembered sunflowers in their prime —
bluetits and finches, sparrow flights
flocked here in droves by hunger’s need…
enjoyed the real sunflower time.

SIGN OF THE TIMES

That green fuse that drove the flower is fading —
torrential rain and thunder mark the change —
friction, on the borders between seasons,
with Summer’s power coming to an end.

Even though the sun returns to warm us,
already some green trees are showing gold;
berries start to ripen in the hedgerows
and days count down on cuckoo pint’s red beads.

Stubble fields are ploughed, last poppies waning,
on cottage wall the last flush of the rose;
Summer’s birds are gathering to leave us —
how is it that they know when seasons change?

ALL POETRY ON THIS WEBSITE IS SUBJECT TO COPYRIGHT