it’s the first month of the year (2024 — 😀 on the assumption this blog may still exist in years to come!) but here in Portugal the weather is unseasonably spring-like…Sun currently shining is mild and tempting all the usual frolics and fecundity of the coming season to erupt a little early:
January Joy
Percussion of a ‘pecker
Drumming high-up in a tree
A visitor who’s often heard
But rarely will you see
The hopeful call of ginger Tom
Weaving through the wood
Looking for a little ‘love’
If someone’s in the mood
My black cat watching from the deck
His warning mewl sounds like a croak
As a weirdly-warm late winter wind
Carries with it aromatic smoke
For local farmers clearing land
Are setting waste to burn
The know they have to take their chance
For weather’s sure to turn
It’s not yet Spring although the Sun
It seems just doesn’t know
It prompts the grasses, shrubs and plants
already keen to grow
Their bursting shoots and blooming buds
Are witnessed everywhere
And though it’s still the year’s first month
The land looks green and fair
But in the pines like candyfloss
The caterpillar’s nebulous nests
Hang heavier and more this time
Home to those hairy, harmful pests
Whose legions will soon start to march
As they follow Nature’s plan
But trooping nose-to-tail they’ll pose
A danger both to beast and man
Just then a raucous fleet arrives
Oblivious to such things
Leaping wildly through the boughs
With a flash of azure wings
As Eucalyptus in hula skirt
Dances in the blithe and balmy breeze
Observed by neighbouring, nodding pines
And envious smaller trees
It seems that sun-blessed joy abounds
Dispelling days of dour, damp chill
As if to say the timeless cycle starts
Once more… just as it always will
Copyright © 2024 Al G Smith
….or, for ‘gluttons for punishment’ 😀 you can listen listen to my effort to narrate the poem here: