EARLY SPRING

 

 

Early Spring

 

Silently and shyly, Spring rose today at dawn,

Hiding her pale face behind a filmy veil

As she crept across the land,

Anxious to be undiscovered

Until she knows her time is ripe.

But the all-observing blackbird sees her

And greets her with a single, muted call,

As if too shrill a cry might warn departing Winter

And give him cause to stay.

The yellowhammer also notices her presence,

And the friendly, scarlet-chested robin,

Prancing joyfully along the leafless hedge;

But they maintain a quiet reticence,

Anxious not to advertise her early outing.

Only the raucous rooks are unremitting;

Calling callously with mocking mirth.

And on the sweetly slumbering magnolia,

Long buds swell with finger-pointing promise,

Soon to burst in fragrant floral fantasy.

Soon, too, delirious hares will dance again

In moonlight, over greening fields.

 

GHOSTS

 

Ghosts

 

Ghosts are different in the open country,

Unconstrained by the memories of walls.

Here they have a lightness that combines

With the beauty of the rising or the setting sun

Or in the gentle rain melt to liquid joy.

You will, I know, have felt their presence

The many times you’ve walked this way.

Perhaps you listened to the sighing wind,

Playing antediluvian melodies with the trees,

Or at half-imagined footsteps, turned around

To see who, with an almost-silent tread,

Had crept behind you as you stood transfixed,

To whisper beautiful, enticing words

That, just indiscernible, you longed to hear again.

I know! For I have heard them, too.

Not torn from wraiths of long-lost chieftans

Who, from their barrows’ vantage, still survey

The beauty of the land they ruled;

These spirits are not embedded in the earth

But, nonetheless, they have a right of tenure here.

Nor do they cry with grief, or pain of things long past,

But murmur with a deep and pure pleasure

That they are free at last – whilst we,

Whose souls remain ineffably attached to earth,

Cannot yet follow where they lead,

Into the very essence of this land,

To commune with trees and rooks and with the winds,

And fly, with soaring gulls, to unimagined heights,

Or follow the fox on silver-shadowed, moonstruck nights

To where fox and hare have secret shadow- trysts.

In wonder, you and I can only pass along this way,

Bound to a world that they have gladly left;

For they are clouds across a blameless sky

And soar, delighted, closer to the sun.