A Completion of Seasons   

 

Here plants go their own way, like children

at  play. Take the fennel: it was used

by Roman gladiators, you told me, to increase stamina;

 

here it prises apart the concrete

paving stones, and its thousand seeds

give it the victory in contests of survival.

 

But bury your face in the soft feathers

of its leaves, remembering Elba, where fennel grew

right down to our magic picnic beach,

 

playground of the dog Titi, who watched, politely,

our every mouthful and never learnt

the futility of chasing gulls.

 

And what of the sage bush, dominating

the border in its serious-minded way? We could not

touch that - it supports spiders’ webs: light

 

travels up and down the vertical threads

as if they were lift shafts, and at the centre

the commanding spiders wait like fat Buddhas.

 

Then there’s the glowing foam of the autumn

stonecrop; each year it spreads a little further -

but not so fast as the peppermint and lemon balm,

 

Go to next poem

 

 

 ;

those steady colonisers of cracks and crevices,

or Michaelmas daisies (thugs, someone called them)

commandeering space like skilled tacticians;

those retiring, innocent looking

mauve flowers belie their nature:

flowers of Michaelmas, feast of St Michael,

 

celebration of that cataclysmic

hurtling of evil into the abyss.

The days were punctuated by small events,

 

like a snatch of the robin’s autumn muted song,

or the flap and clap of wood pigeons

flying in for lunch. You liked September

 

best of all: the achievement of fruit (the year’s

rich takings), a completion of seasons,

an achieved peace. But wildness still lurked,

 

like some untamed corner of ourselves.

The unquelled light flowed through low trees.

All things converged.

 

 

                                                       Daphne  Gloag

 

Awarded third prize in the Ealing Leisure and Arts 2009 poetry competition, judged by Kit Wright