Excerpts from Early Rising (2)
by J.B. Pick

 

Objectively speaking

 

A leaf is signalling in stars of light,
The midges drift and dash; *
Autumn is being cautious and polite
Before the winter clash.
Time's rope grows shorter, and I can't delay.
Consider what life yields:
A pile of useless paper to destroy,
And dung to scatter on the fields.

 

 

 

To gardeners

 

Leave as you go each seventh weed,
Allow the unexpected seed,
For if in battle nature wins
A rising spiral then begins;
If cunning man should win the war -
Dead souls on a dead star.

 

 

 

Early rising

 

To greet the dawn was my mistake:
Midges are the first to wake. *

 

 

 

Stone circle

 

This rock country long besieged by time
With stony cunning engineered and egg;
Out of the egg a thought broke forth and grew:
Time will never catch it now.

 

 

 

The language

 

The water speaks, insistent and withdrawn.
Lichen forms a pattern on the stone.
This language lives; it's not addressing me,
Yet something stirs, and struggles to reply.

 

 

 

 

* a midge is a tiny mosquito type fly which is very common in Scotland. They are very annoying but largely harmless.

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