THE IRONY OF SUMMER

The Irony of Summer

She took me there, and beyond

The forest canopy; nude

Silver bark, and tensile skin,

Pale in the frosted light.

Where Winter’s wide aperture,

Of shorn hedgerow, and exposure,

Lay trampled underfoot;

Cold comfort in the early night.  

She took me there, and beyond

Sylvan bower; fully dressed

Undergrowth, and freckled chin,

Darkened in an exuberant light.

Where the narrow aperture  

Of dense foliage, and privacy,

Has scent and sense surround,

In an irony of Summer’s right.

©R.Derham 2014

BOG COTTON

(It hangs there by a thread, denser than thistledown,

Reluctant to fly, a weather vane that traces

The flow of cloud shadow over monotonous bog -

And useless too, though it might well bring to mind

The plumpness of pillows, the staunching of wounds,

Rags torn from a petticoat and soaked in water

And tied to the bushes around some holy well

As though to make a hospital of the landscape -

Cures and medicines as far as the horizon

Which nobody harvests except with the eye.)

Michael Longley

(b.1939)

BOG COTTON

(Two middle verses of a four verse poem contrasting the 'poppies'

of war with the bog cotton of healing and reconciliation)

2006