Poem – Rachel McAlpine

From ‘Doshisha Diary’

May 12

In the night a baby summer
rolls on to my bare back
like a sumo tiger …
all warm fur, and feel
the weight of it.

May 27

Hot rain.
Everybody fears it
except
the odd optimist,
charmed
to feel that
dear old flesh
start melting
into good mud,
pleased to be
punctured
by keen green,
loving
to loll like a field
reflecting
all things higher,
including sky.

June 14

Under a rounded sky
of grey compounded water,
every shadow is green.

The green of growing rice
fountains out to stain
the atmosphere light green.

In the green conundrum
every clue is solved with green
and every corner points
from green to green to green …

except, in the tea-green heat
of June, four lumps of rain
squat on a lotus leaf.
Each alone in a zipped
meniscus, gleaming white
as ice or chips of shattered
safety-glass, they wink
at the gang of green.

 

Rachel McAlpine

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