NaPoWriMo #24: Return of Spring

And so sits the dove in the ivy-clad tree,
watching as one season gives way to another.

Watching as the skeletal brown
turns to green, and the treetops

are now alive with birdsong.
Thrushes, finches, tits and robins

conjure up a chorus
of incessant cheer.

In the pond below the dove's perch
sits a chamber orchestra of frogs

all croaking in harmonic baritones
complimenting the treetop choir

heralding in the long days
and the longer sunsets.

And so sits the dove in the ivy-clad tree
singing as spring returns to the forest.

Cryogenic Foetal Lizard

One silver tadpole,
encased, embalmed,
caught mid-fall
from an oasis
in the branches.

A lizard, curled up,
almost foetal,
scales and claws
preserved, pristine,
by cryogenic sap.

A midge, taking off
from a petrified perch,
framed, glistening,
wings rendered still,
yet in permanent flight.

A red ant, crooked legs,
frozen in its prison,
a bulging abdomen,
a honeypot,
a golden bubble.

(This poem was inspired by a documentary about amber presented by Sir David Attenborough back in 2002. Check out The Amber Time Machine if you get the chance, it's really worth a watch.)

New Osmosis

Photosynthesis
has never been
so toxic.

The tree is cloaked
with rusted steel.
Oil trickles
from wounds
in the metal,
congealing,
clotting.

The leaves reek
of petrol fumes,
the withered branches
droop from the heat
of leaded starch,

piston-roots thrumming,
powering the engine
beneath the trunk,
pumping up oil
which soaked in
when it fell from
soot-infested clouds.

NaPoWriMo #14: Early Spring

For today's NaPoWriMo poem, I've chosen a favourite topic of poets through the years: the seasons. More specifically, the early spring which we're currently experiencing, and the title of this piece is pretty self-explanatory.

Early Spring

Spring, that time of year
when grey becomes a memory
not so distant, close enough
to remember the bitter cold,
and green starts to assert itself.

Trees, skeletons of bark and timber,
their branches dotted with dormant alveoli,
return to their former selves
week after week till the green
blossoms into a swaying canvas.

Hidden away inside itself,
frozen by the frost and vice-grip
of the last winter's cold,
a yellow rose bud sprouts
and transforms into an amber altar.

Feathers and Scales

In the early morning at Bhimpur village,
a peacock sits resplendent and glittering
in the red sun on a dry stone wall.
His emerald feathers sleep in his tail.
He snaps his head sideways
at a shape in the gloom under
the wall of a silent mud hut.

The cobra twists
over pots and baskets after
the scent of careless rats.
The cobra did not think
that she might be slithering
towards the shadow
of a far from ornamental bird.

The snake was unaware that she might meet
the god of war's chariot drawer
next to a stone hut,
for on the back of the cobra's hood
is the mark of her own divinity.
Perhaps the vicious bird missed it.
A sharp flicker in the peacock's blazing eyes,
a flutter of royal blue feathers
and the reptile murderer strikes
too soon for the cobra to sprout her hood.

Claws, which yesterday danced for a mate
tear at scales.
For all the peacock's cold savagery,
the cobra's scales serve it well.
The snake darts back to the hole.
The surprised bird takes off
as his enemy disappears underground,
and the ringing cry of the incensed bird
echoes through the sleeping forest.

(This poem is set in a small village in Kanha National Park, and features a phrase which caused chaos when it was first read by my peers. See if you can guess which phrase it is.)

Their Last Bough

Trees don't make great hiding places.
Nobody seemed to have told us.
Perched on branches thick with leaves,
invisible to the mortal eye.

Nobody seemed to have told us
the teacher was on her way.
Invisible to the mortal eye,
we could be heard all the way to Bettws.

The teacher was on her way,
we knew the protocol for this.
We could be heard all the way to Bettws,
no wonder she caught us so easily.

We knew the protocol for this,
falling out of the branches one by one.
No wonder she caught us so easily
but our last man was still hidden.

Falling out of the branches one by one,
we were certainly going to die.
But our last man was still hidden,
before the bough gave way.

We were certainly going to die,
perched on branches thick with leaves
before the bough gave way.
Trees don't make great hiding places.

(This pantoum was inspired by a tree-climbing escapade I was involved in while at school.)