Mid-spring, not yet
the winter of my self
but counting laps because
if not equal to the joy
of the walk itself,
exercise has become
exercise.
I now recognise the speed
at which an hour or 24
can elude me
but today I stay the course
looking up as these anti-
musicians alert me
to transfiguration,
to wonder as I write
at this rendering of being
in words – all approximations
and limitations.
Again and again beauty
belies any name I give it;
bucolic for instance,
a word I cannot reconcile
with pleasantry of any kind
each time hearing bubonic
in its stead.
Now these cockatoos
sulphur-crested and signalling
my brain into a holding pattern
of uneasy connotations.
The reductive atomic number 16.
Brimstone’s divine damnation.
And still I welcome this weirdly
softening buttercup sky,
these raucous angels on L plates
raining life’s discordant truths
until I find once more
my own uncensored laugh,
my own remarkable twist in the path.