September
The strewn bales lie – a fleet of barges moored
in their stubble harbour – expectant, as though ready
at evening, when the slant sun liquefies
the landscape, to go bobbing out to sea
on golden tides. The equinox glides past
unnoticed like a stagehand at his work
discreetly rearranging scenery.
Soon we’ll learn to call this season autumn.
© Anthony Watts
Oldie
Grimly iconic, your three-score-and-ten
Behind you, you can’t help but wonder when
The Big D will arrive; although for years
You’ve known that nothing justifies those fears:
An absence (pace Larkin) cannot feel
Itself as loss, or death as an ordeal;
Not for ourselves we turn from that good night,
But those who love us – their forsaken plight.
When days speed up like hyperactive kids
Racing towards the inevitable skids
It’s time for magic and for sapience:
Comb out the long beard of experience;
Release the magus; summon to the fore
Your inner Merlin, Gandalf, Dumbledore.
© Anthony Watts
Forecast
Climate’s a cat: the world
a ball of wool.
.
Here in our garden
it’s little more than kittenish,
.
cuffing the trees to sway, swashing
its tail against the window.
.
Others are not so lucky: lives
left torn and tangled where the sea pounced
.
or parched and cropless
under the eye’s furnace
.
as the planet begins to unravel.
© Anthony Watts
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