Breaking Light: part four
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iv
It is late. It is early.
We finally met
at Lammas –
when summer first seems to sense
its own mortality.
Ours is a late summer love.
Not the foolishness of Spring,
swept along by giddy lusts,
the chancy intoxication of the May,
nor the apparent glory of June,
when midsummer dazzles us
with its gaudy enchantment,
but a love of long shadows,
of languid contentment.
Ripening to prime –
we are ready for love’s press.
It insists we offer all.
What can be gained from
withholding the tiniest drop?
Pulp and pith and pip,
let the cloth of truth,
contain our allness.
Gladly we bring our bounty to share
to the harvest supper of the heart.
Arriving in splendour,
wearing our autumn like a crown,
we greet each other
at the end of a long road,
our harlequin robes
stretching behind us.
Stopping to let the sunset slip
like a mug of copper hops
down a thirsty throat
over the blue tapestry of hills
pegged to the sky by trees,
we give thanks for the abundance,
the riches of the year,
strewn before us
with such wild abandon.
Yet the thrift of Mother Earth
means nothing
is wasted.
All the ungathered,
unreachable treasure
that falls on the ground,
unpicked, to rot,
becomes the mulch
from which the future grows.
Copyright ©Kevan Manwaring 2010
Continued tomorrow
First published in Soul of the Earth (Awen 2010) and soon to be featured in the forthcoming Silver Branch: bardic poems by Kevan Manwaring (Awen 2017).
https://www.awenpublications.co.uk/
This entry was posted in Uncategorized on October 16
