The Tinder Box Garden
And so begins
another day,
of heat and silence,
already the apple trees
wilt under the weight
of the harvest year,
each full, each heavy,
with the light
and warmth
of the summer sun,
and here,
in the cool shade
of early shadows,
the first breath
of the hush and wind,
whisper, play and falter,
resting awhile,
upon the crisp
and wrinkled hands
of leaves,
they tremble and fall,
the weight
of the blue sky,
too much to bare,
the thin sliver
of clouds, stretch
the early day into possibilities
across the sun-scorched brown
of a shrinking earth,
as a raven flies
a shriek
of warning
over the garden steps,
the same steps
that left yesterday’s evening behind,
as the scimitar-moon,
tilted and turned across
the glistening heat
of rooftops,
but here,
this morning,
having slipped like the last remnant
of a vanquished
and conquered people,
the descending stone steps
seem vacant,
abstract,
a short path,
to a forgotten spring,
each of the flowers
shrink, nod, dry
and brittle,
the hand and heat
of the morning silence,
slip, not by chance,
into numbing press
of an August day.
And far below,
far,
far below,
at the edge
of the empty fields,
along the narrow lane
that twists and turns
beneath the question marks
of willow,
the thousand thinning wreaths
of shimmering blue-silver leaves,
the dried river bed
is just a memory
of the hard stones
of truth and voices,
the great thirst
of an unforgettable flood.
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p1964km@googlemail.com
