Gannet’s Roman Water Clock


I never did pick the last of the season’s cherries.
If you had walked by the garden late autumn
you would have smelled their over-ripeness

and seen the birds picking at the moldy ground
below my nets. I believe it is some kind of sin -
having laid claim to fruit I never ate. Even now

the nets spread over the branches—though more
than once, Christmastime, I had put on my boots
before remembering that the ladder needs mending.

From the daybed, during January’s few light hours,
when my breathing was easier and I looked up
from my book, the sight was magnificent!

My nets of new foliage: blue ice like the long, thin leaves
of a white willow; moss lining under a wintering claw.
I was the goddess of a season, at once ancient and new.

Today the air is still and the snowflakes fall
slowly like sleepwalkers brushing against the sharp
crocus and melting in the handing-over. Water drips

from one jar into the next as the Roman clock
you sent me measures time. It’s Monday
March 1st, a good day to start the New Year.
 

© Ren Katherine Powell

 

Spring Heralds

Eirik informs me it’s spring
-three weeks now, he says

walking to the mailbox today
I crunch through the transparent-grey melting
crystals that cling to the yard like a lingering
infection, grudgingly slipping flecks of dog shit
and plastic bags glistening, wet

At the base of the dripping cherry tree
under its winter witch-finger canopy in the sharp light
snowdrops have bloomed and hang on thin stalks
backing into their own season

But I’m waiting for the spiked
tongues of the crocus
to make a statement
and mean it

 

 

© Ren Katherine Powell