Some transparencies of Spring

Some of my hopes have air in them -

Polluting and renewing;

They are inhabited by light breezes and hurricanes

Erratically, like prayer flags

On a Himalayan hillside;

A photon spectrum like daggers and gifts, like galaxies.

My hopes grow quietly after winter chills;

So many bulbs gently budding through cold earth

Trigger my cynical self, as I hold down the lid

Of the forbidden box.

I close my lips against those nuggets of despair:

Brace my sympathies against that bottomless pit,

Though in winter

Warm as mulled wine, snuggled duvets,

In spring, awaken to the scent of bluebells in a wood.

A zero size ingénue leaps over the half moon

Hazed with misty clouds

While our fair sister

Is ravaged and plundered.

Let’s crucify those trouble-makers

Whose prophets turn tables in temples.

How often can the fished men turn the other cheek?

Let them pray for those for whom

Enough is never enough;

When their darkest hour is just before the dawn.

Sneer again, you ‘I’m all right Jacks’

To everything, you turn, turn, turn,

To never see the stubborn, hopeless struggles

Of scroungers and wasters.

While on Mayday,

Pennants bluster at the village fete;

A mumming doctor feverishly searches

for another of earth’s ailments

to extract from dead St George’s belly

before his sword will rise again.

And the green frog kicks gently in the warming waters.

Exquisitely painted feathers softly fall from decoy ducks

As they arise from the ashes;

And the artists are still knocking on Pandora’s box,

They say, ‘Time to let me in.

Don’t feed me that soft soap Mother Hubbard.

It won’t wash,  them trickie dickie, life cares

outta my hair.’

So I stumble, fall flat, earth gritted in my teeth,

While my bird-like kite

Swoops, independent,

And tangles again, in Nina’s

Blossom on the trees

You know what I mean.

And I’m feeling good.