Tag Archives

July

VALENTINE WEATHERS

January is like navigating

ice floes – then eventually heading east

for aromatic landfalls, or west

following the setting sun, or south

for the long haul like some latter day Cook,

journeying without guides into foreign parts.

 

The first port of call is in February.

Love fills the sails, the swell lifts the bow.

We met one July, married one August.

In May our daughter will be fifty one.

The bow lifts in the swell, the canvas fills with love.

 

Fearing the doldrums, I write each poem

as if it were to be the last – whistling up

favourable words speaking of love,

voyaging without charts.

 

 

 

JULY…

the month we found, beyond the rose of sharon,
past the mint and the sage, in the sunless
corner by broken pots and upturned
zinc buckets, the first wild strawberry…

when we walked up the Acropolis,
with feral dogs among the olive trees…

when we walked through Carnac’s standing stones
and heard the wind shake the fields of wheat…

when we decorated our first home,
with Chris Montez, ‘The more I see you’…

the month we met on a date blind like Cupid
or Justice – between the end of schooldays
and the rest of our lives…

 

 

 

A BOOK OF HOURS

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read400 views

 

'Fevrier' from Les Tres Riche Heures du Duc De Berry
'Février' from Les Tres Riche Heures du Duc De Berry

 

July

We are rather formally attired

for country pursuits in the ducal woods;

August

me with a tie and you, I uncover,

with white suspenders and matching knickers.

September

Intimate stranger, forever touching

for your least kindness, forever surprising;

October

unpredictable as light, you bring

my heart from hiding again and again!

November

Earth warms. Ice melts. Seas rise. And nothing,

everything changes. Each day, we marvel.

December

Still flowering, for our wintry birthdays,

are fuchsias, geraniums, a rose.

January

As the tide turns, we watch snow drifting

landward over fields, woods, hilltops.

February

We turn for home – and, in the dark border

beneath the ivy, find the first snowdrop.

March

Our camellia flowers: hardy, exotic.

Palaces are stormed. Governments fall.

April

Somewhere the wind is always blowing.

We make our house tight against all weathers.

May

A solitary swift arrives, gliding,

banking, silent. Our daughter is born.

June

And verdant England is replete with bird song,

with that hushed stirring, that old, old promise.