Wednesday 8 February 2017

Chill Days

This poem uses half-rhymes in the second and fourth lines of each stanza.

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Equator-crossed the sun grows fat,
Pricking shoots to white-legs growth,
Though midden-mist and boot-wet frost
Rattle the cowman’s morning cough –
   These chill days.

Christmas days thieved autumn’s warmth,
Though ’piphany days were ice-chunk hard;
Now March and April’s cuckoo hours
With fox-grey cloud and hail make laud –
   These chill days.

The loose-lipped gaffer, dry of sap,
Unsteady stands on shrunken legs;
Not so the chestnut, fat for leaf
With treacled buds like big-thumbed figs –
   These chill days.

Wind-busied sleet begins to fall,
Bobbling among bare-fingered trees;
Buttermilk sunshine grins and sets
The yellow aconite ablaze –
   These chill days.

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© March 2014