Rise earlier than anyone. So. Then. If.
Sing at dawn to the blackbirds,
one chord plus reverb.
Not that I’m taking the sound apart.
What’s coming drifts into view. A new draft
of ‘who I am’, ‘what I want to be’,
the erratic course the heron cut away from another night.
So. Then. If. The frosted grass
greens under the budding trees.
Black brims of shadow. A life swims
into the fortress of a formal device.
I gloried in the forecast white-out.
But today’s stir – its spray of pink and late light,
the early return of colour, crazy tropics –
tenders the earth to my planted foot.
In the trees, the lights hide in the new leaves;
through a crisscross fence a heron
I mistook for the statue of a heron in the river.
So. Then. If. It takes off.
Shadows retreat. Once
I would not look.
Or check. There was dew on the grass
and birdsong too, the heron on his stilts,
years of the other lives that make one life.
Today’s poem is from John McAuliffe’s new collection, National Theatre (Gallery Press).
Sing at dawn to the blackbirds,
one chord plus reverb.
Not that I’m taking the sound apart.
What’s coming drifts into view. A new draft
of ‘who I am’, ‘what I want to be’,
the erratic course the heron cut away from another night.
So. Then. If. The frosted grass
greens under the budding trees.
Black brims of shadow. A life swims
into the fortress of a formal device.
I gloried in the forecast white-out.
But today’s stir – its spray of pink and late light,
the early return of colour, crazy tropics –
tenders the earth to my planted foot.
In the trees, the lights hide in the new leaves;
through a crisscross fence a heron
I mistook for the statue of a heron in the river.
So. Then. If. It takes off.
Shadows retreat. Once
I would not look.
Or check. There was dew on the grass
and birdsong too, the heron on his stilts,
years of the other lives that make one life.
Today’s poem is from John McAuliffe’s new collection, National Theatre (Gallery Press).
