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Christopher Allan

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Mid March

You don’t require the celandine
to make you glad, nor puddles
or primroses, nor strawberry-leaved
cinquefoil. That lark may stop his trill
in blue, clear air and the robin who gave
his five minute solo to you at Arley
might have spared his breath.

Today you would be content
if the sun did not shine; you’d not
bewail the lack of light-flash on water
at Trimpley. Rain would not lessen you.
You covet nothing, grasp only the moment
fleet as the flooding Severn. Neither do you
desire the taste of fruit or salt
on your tongue, nor sweetness in your tea.
Packed into each hour, as seeds
in the core of a Granny Smith,
lies an emptiness which flowers.

If you could slip out of yourself
like you let fall a tired suit of clothes,
some god would whisper in your ear
of other faces you might wear.
You’d come to the tranquillity of tulips
that in your garden’s corner
somehow seem to be saved
from the storm’s fists, the bite of frost.

Now in the lit briars and weeds,
in the sharp flags of rising smoke,
you sense the fire god come, catch
the ripple of his wings in the flames’
                                                  fluster.
But under all a silence takes into itself
the afternoon and makes it what it is.

Toward evening you walk alone in the wood.
Wind rivers through branches, the milky bells
of snowdrops shake. March reaches forward,
restless hands search the dimming light
for the touch of April, fresh-faced as a girl.

 

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