It is dark
And close to winter’s edge.
The old earth rumbles on.
Night brings its own sounds
With the Tarzan glide
Of wanton possums
Flicking tails and branches
Across their foraging rituals:
The leaves shake like glittering glass.
 
The native cherry
Glows soft:
Its delicate blossoms 
Like votive candles
Barely perceived
In the warm evening air.
 
Eastertide
And no chilliness.
The roses have lost their way
Heady with their tragic blooms
Lulled by the melisma
That trills across the garden:
Calling forth the dormant buds 
Of white camellia’s fame.
 
The sharpness of summer’s blast
Seems to linger
In the parched earth of autumn.
All is known
All is different:
A gust of wind
Summons fresh intent
Then curtsies and is gone.
 
This night
This dark
This warmth 
Snatch at the day’s decline:
Slowly evaporating 
Into the soft tincture 
Of some preternatural Aeolian harp.
 
A tread
A resonance
A scattering of sound:
Twigs
Leaves
Crunched in low pulse
 
Confounding, communing
Like Schubert “grillen schwirren”.
My ears pinprick the jet black
To know that  hidden music:
A small orbit
A body of sound
Another planet’s distant breeze?
 
Near the garden fence
The old piano frame
Braced in its plastic shroud
Leans backwards
Alive with spectral sound. 
 
Something living
Tiptoes across its wobbly strings:
A bush rat
Its babies
Tuning, snuggling, feeding
Tinkering with the Germanic sound board
As they sigh and dream.
 
I stand still and smile.
These sounds drift upwards
Murmuring with soft joys:
The night will not store
The day’s rough anger.
Gently I turn inwards
And open the cottage door
But one speck of awareness
In this vast ‘vernetzten welt’.
Connected: how simply we succumb to rest!

gar jones -  May 2019