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.