Magnetic resonance

Vascular life
           with its niggling
day-to-day setbacks
           the rough taken
with the smooth
           dismissed perhaps
as time’s tantrums
           life calling death’s bluff

and in the garden
           the wheelbarrow laden
with fresh turf
           a new lawn to be laid
and the wind picks up
           and autumn is upon us
with its August lights
           that draw in the moths

winter preparations
           for the season of silence
the months straddled
           by ice and snow
and a world-weariness
           the long bed of the river
silting as it snakes
           into the empty sea

and love that clings
           to pearls of naked flesh
that longs for the warmth
           of word-wisdom and
gentility on the tongue
           a lamp burning through
the long nights
           the random days
that consecrate love’s
           tender traffic

John Lyons