I know you serin

I know you serin

I know you serin by your song
and by your chosen spot
you sit small and still and often on the wires
even without the yellow, give-away
and similarly swifts
scimitar and squeal
the tree-frog's quack
astonishing, his lurid green
humming-bird hawk moths
for their swing-hover, side-slipping,
proboscis in the pinks and petunias
night-scented stocks, impatiens
perfume sweet and strong
like the song
pitched high above the rest
the yellow flash, so now he's on the tamarisk
all about their business
lizard quick, slick on path or wall
as I hang washing, water
un-kink the hose, dead-head
their world, my world
my world, theirs
I know you serin by your song.

14th June 2014 Hounoux.

Moon and Nightingale

Moon and Nightingale

One evening in May towards the end

June ready in the wings

after a day that sang of summer, warm and still

insects profuse

we dined and wined two friends.

She spoke of rosé recommended, grown here, the Languedoc

then other topics flowed

geography, history, place and time

bloodiness enough

chateaux, popes and heresy, gruesome ways to death

but much more to my taste and interest, the raucous choir cacophony

of crickets, frogs and birds now tuning up

as dusk fell slow

and suddenly she hushed us all to listen:

from the margins, fig trees on our boundary

we heard  it loud and sweet and  as the song reprised in phrases

clearly Keat’s beloved bird,

a nightingale, in fullest flow.

Later through the glass when chill air drove us in

we watched a huge moon rise

deepest yellow gold.

Put those together, moon and nightingale

quick, catch them in the jar

the lid the lid

for  just in case of

memory, now scratching, etching, graffiti artist on my soul
reaching for poetry,

should feeble grow and fail. 

Hounoux, June 8th 2014, for Jenny and John who taught us how