Nature

Fire

Once set and lit a fire is free, 

burning how it wishes 

untamed defiant steel blue

seditious callous green

delinquent sharp orange

and an assassin’s red tongue

flames writhe in their wanton tortured spectrum

winds might seek to move its will

to bear it on a certain path

but fire’s business is burning

charring, gnawing consuming

it’s of its own, unchallenged

but a fire’s life is short

a one-way battle to ash

death inevitable,

a long degrading throe

but life rekindled from the embers

is a new fire

no reincarnation of the old

*

On the Level

land borrowed from nature’s benefice

watched keenly 

from the Isle of Frogs to distant Isle of Glass

from time to time

burtles breach the floods 

like basking whales

when banks and reens 

and clyses all fall short

I scan the bristling ripples

for signs of life

and wait

*

Puthering

here hangs an unlikely chill

come ephemeral clouds

myriad gnats 

to dance a busy stitch

around the warming air

ecstasy unknown to man

futile crazed chaos frantic

before the fickle drizzle

casts each one asunder

*

Wren

a tiny ball of fluff

barely that

a dart, a flitter

dipping its beak

cocking a snook, tail erect

here, there everywhere

but nowhere very long

a shrill tremulous songster

teet-teet-teet vigorously sung

as he builds, 

one nest, two or even three

a harem awaits

to lay white pebbles

on feathered beds.