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.