June's Verses

  I have been scribbling a bit this past month. Mostly low-grade scraps of poetry in my journal. I am back to writing some rhymes again, which I find interesting, as I could not do rhymes at all for some time. I have always been fascinated with assonance, though, especially the Anglo-Saxon poetic form (though I can only read translations and thereby, I am sure, miss out on a great deal of the original beauty). Tolkien's style was heavily influenced by these older forms, and I greatly admire his poetry. Morris' The House of the Wolfings is spectacular, and I have been getting the itch to read it again, though unfortunately, I left my copy in Africa, and it has since been through a cyclone and, I suspect, may no longer be legible. 

  So anywho, here are a few of my own paltry scraps. Nothing like a solid dose of humility by comparison!

June's gold lies in tawny ranks;

The grass heads glimmer in the wind,

And lilies gleam from shady banks,

Fluorescent echoes of the sun.

The cows move, and their glossy flanks,

Reflective of an ancient coin,

Are satin in the light and grace

Of summer's bounty just begun.

9 o'clock

The longest day,

And moon awakes

Above the mullein tower.

Farewell at last

The sinking sun,

Steal in the purple hour.

Planting Rain

How tenderly the rain is coming down!

Bedecks each blade and stem with shining light

Whispers to the seed, 'awake! Awake!'

And kisses rootlets furled in loamy bliss.

My head is bare, I wear the gentle rain

Like jewels in my damply curling hair,

My feet go down into the teeming earth

And seem to root there, like a stranger tree.

My dripping fingers drill the yielding sod

And place the tiny seed, and cover it,

And move on to the next place, confident,

The rain will do its work, and then the sun,

And one by one, new seedlings will emerge;

Spread out their leaves, and revel in the rain.