... The weather here must have been exceptionally good over the past few weeks as I can't recall having felt this way even before the schools have broken up for their long summer holidays!

SEASONAL PALETTE


The watercolour transparence
of mid-summer’s sable brushstrokes

idling the length of light-parched,
stubble-pricked fields

has been suddenly replaced
by palette-knife slappery,

the superficial paste
of an overnight rain on
heath’s dark peat sand.

Waiting for wine-bruise stains
and for soft-squeezed flesh
of over-ripened berries;

for ruby-red crushed veins of leaves
and for mossy, rippled bark

to fatten afresh rich colours
of rising winds that swell

sweatsalt-crusted lips
and breast and heart,

I’m ready now for
emollient autumn’s
thick layering of oils.