Mid-summer now, too soon; on the downward slope you are gathering speed. You have come, after so long, to know how you should live, and there is left
so little time. Like the too-short showing of perfection
of the bearded iris: you, too, have flowered and already
the shivering has begun. The ageing bones grow brittle,
you hear them – distant wind-chimes – make a discreet
music. Rain now, mid-summer, all-day rain,
slippering through the foliage; you can almost see
the runner beans stretch fragile fingers upwards
towards the roots of rain. Poets have been asserting, yet again,
the demise of God, world-maker, as if they were unsure
of the human drive towards ego, while you still reach
towards the roots of faith lest the human spirit droop
saturated through by the demands of physics. God’s
motions, raindance on the motorways, slip jigs, high-steps;
a slug in its ecstasy is trailing down the Matterhorn
of the white-washed wall and you stand, awed once more,
while the grace-filled sycamores have their green hair washed,
among the every-morning miracles, weed and seed and fruit
as the fierce, the human project hurries, unhumbly, by.