a dancing blossom

 

one slice of time that's all we can expect
for flowers to blow and raise their happy heads
covering ground with pinks and even reds
the fated changes they seem to reject
with our tired souls they have to connect
to raise us every morning from our beds
and make us smile and so forget our dreads
the beauty and the day must intersect
autumn is clarity it does not fool
our eyes with anything but honest light
although we know the year is speeding hence
it takes us for a while to a new school
where for a moment we may learn delight
and so refresh the haughty fading sense

reading student essays

 

too many words piled thick and very dense
with little order hardly any fact
and ignorance remains wholly intact

of conviction there is no real pretense
no understanding of what they have lacked
too many words piled thick and very dense

thought must require an effort too intense
and so they substitute with trivial fact
and passages plagiarised intact
too many words piled thick and very dense

roi de mes douleurs

against the coming day is no defence
we take what we are given and we smile
there's never reason for hurrying hence

we add together all the pounds and pence
that does not ever take us a long while
against the coming day is no defence

there isn't any green past the last fence
and we all reach that place in the same style
there's never reason for hurrying hence

nor do we have much reason for suspense
nothing remains once you have crossed the stile
against the coming day is no defence

no need for sacrifice or burnt incense
there is no angel at the last defile
there's never reason for hurrying hence

we can't expect the whole thing to make sense
from the last injury we won't resile
against the coming day is no defence
there's never reason for hurrying hence

portolan

 

the seas we cross are never very strange
we follow closely all the ancient charts
the three dimensions play their proper parts

a sort of recompense we might arrange
in places where the dolphin swiftly darts
the seas we cross are never very strange

we abhor constancy and desire change
after so many errors and false starts
but do not value only modern arts
the seas we cross are never very strange

the old magics

 

the creatures of the other world all died
when we arrived at the first age of reason
before that time old magic held seizin
the world we had was fully occupied
by fascinating entities that eyed
all that we did in and out of season
eager to aid as eager for treason
and then all of them scuttled off to hide
there is not reason we should not have seen
in those far times a gleam among the leaves
but now all seems in natural order
we cannot reach what once so real had been
every one who claims it simply deceives
and there is silence on that ancient border