When, Mud, March ending & Passing
by Alison Brackenbury
[ poetry - march 08 ]
When
When we were younger, she,
who was wiser, kinder,
lamented that she had to sleep,
she had so much to do.
I did not understand:
But her parents were old,
I think she could smell death, on the wind,
the sudden warmth of snow.
Mud
How does it start? A skid. But trace
Through it, hard lines of winter's face.
Soon it sucks off your boots.
Frost turns it iron, rough ridge and ruts.
Yellow as dung, it stains March floods.
Next it grows stiff as roots
Welds horses' heels. Earth dries to rust,
Cracks to savannah, coughs up dust,
Forgotten, a sloughed coat.
It brings hedge parsley's plume of leaf:
Cowslips. White-headed, light as grief,
Moondaisies soar and float.
March ending
The man, who, no doubt angry,
Stepped to the path with his gun
As the pony and I blundered
Through the frail egg of March sun
Could have been my grandfather, keepering
As the First World War began.
Killers keep tidy order.
We fled on with the day
Saw peewits plunge above their nest
Drive one sleek crow away,
Then trotted home, like cavalry,
To the green tea breath of hay.
Tonight they forecast hours of rain
High as the Severn Bore.
But streetlights sleep in caves of hedge
Roads gleam, dry as before.
Will we taste such endless summer?
It is quiet enough for war.
Passing
What use are swallows to us?
In restless April, with the cold all gone,
in the wet evening, low as the sun
which the rain has drowned, swift as messages
you never sent, their wingtips slim
as your young body
I never saw
they criss and cross me
like a kiss.
What good are swallows for?
