Spring part one

False starts, spring stutters

 Inexorably to Life,

As winter in defiance does her best

To keep her hold,

 With snatches of  frost and  flurry.

But  the blood is up and  the sap is rising,

Excitement is here to stay:

Copulating doves

 Bill and coo their mutual adoration.

Starlings, like sweaty wives

 Incessantly  gabbling  their gossip in raucous mimicry,

Strut  the lawn in half ordered lines,

Leather Jacketing.


Rooks party.

  An aerial  disco at  tree top level.

And  the landscape,

 Once clad in muted hues of  buff and ochre,

 Gives way to the verdant greens of sprouting grass

 Where an early crop of  lambs

 Skip and  frolic and

Return to head  butt mothers udder

 The reward seen in excited tails.


Everywhere new life surges, pushed up by

Some unseen hand  from mother’s earth.

Fragile in its newness,

Rrobust in its vigour,

Bewildering in its diversity.


Sticky buds of would-be “conkers”,

The velvet soft  of  beech  leaves hanging limp

Like drying butterflies wings,

Tthe heady  waft  of  the flowering current

Sstir memories of  childhood.

The race is on, running,  faster, bigger,

To summer.