Sneezing through Spring lassitude.
How to impose meaning
on the loose chaos of the backyard?
For brief weeks a timid
of the hawthorn tree,
alone among sugargums, (so Gaelic legend tells),
to accommodate fairies.
Dormant all year with dappled fishhooks,
now it flames a piracy of pink.
The whippersnipper put challenge
to the snakes; the threats of nature;
and the imminent sparks
of Summer disaster.
The romance of belief in legends, thorns,
and the false order of mowing.
But my heart is not in it.
I sneeze most horribly.
Profusion of pollen.
Pungent climax of spores from that portwine
magnolia, fragrant as the memory of medicine.
Scales of a trout the sun on leaves.
Bee filled lilac climbing.
This awkward awe of description,
and on a weekday.