Black And Gold

Turn your palms to sunrise, fix for dappled gold,
Look past willow-reach and reed,
Through wind-blown dandelion clock
But before branch and bracken, then focus.
Keep still and stare,
Every ripple, air bubble and reflection;
Dancing flecks of summer’s brightest ideas.

Reach out and take a pinch,
Bring it close to study, one eye firmly closed.
Hold and twist, examine, feel and touch and watch it change,
Now bend your elbow, tense, and throw,
Throw it back before it’s too late.

No two seconds are alike,
That never-before-seen shape never-will-be-seen again,
Opaque green, broken grey and sudden red,
Between them all is every imaginable and unimaginable colour,
Meadow-rich with wildflower warmth.

Shift your gaze to fragile wings,
To body made of burnt rust-gold, to stripe of honeyed black,
But blink and she’ll be gone forever,
Stolen back by pages of the books from summers past,
Their words now long-ago, half-torn chapter names
Like Scatter-wide, Amber, and Dragonfly.

Here is heaven, peace,
Here is lost and found and everything yet to be forgotten.
It’s mellow breeze and prize of life,
It’s spirit-lift of borrowed time,
It’s glimpse of followed path.

Now breathe.
Watch blue of jay between the trees,
See the shine of starling’s iridescence.
Listen for the skylark song,
Hear the chat of magpie on the wind.

And there he is, the crow,
Studied grin and impossibly black,
His scruffy head is half-combed spill of oil
And soot and smoke and smog and under-shadow,
With beak and eye to match.

Look up and map the clouds,
Trace their forms then start to count them,
Steal their faith in wisp, in hazed belonging.
Let them show you how to drift,
To lose yourself in thoughtless distant feeling for a moment.
Be the cloud.

Head due south towards the coast,
Wash air with sea spray.
Feel the pull of golden sand on stone,
The wave to rise and crest then roar and crash
Dispersing all of cool and shivered sudden gasp of breath.

Now return,
Rise up and seek your breeze.
Take that celandine ray, use it as your wish.
Soar above the fields - each one a perfect piece of earth its best,
At once a growing harvest of the age.
From all the way up here, they’re postage stamps from corners of the world,
Prized possessions left to dry and blacken,
Curl their edges, fade to old, then glow.

Drop your shoulder, stretch and reach,
Cup your hand and feel them on your skin,
Their rasp turns scratch to soothe then stroke and flow in bliss,
Clench your fist to grasp a handful, hear them snap.
Fill your pockets full of season’s yield to savour every second.

And all of this again tomorrow,
More of gold and more of black,
More sitting on the muddy bank with dreams of scorched earth buttercups,
Of sun kissed sea salt burst of root,
Of dusty tired eyes.
For now, however, ground yourself
Then watch 'til sundown, dusk and nightfall steal away
The summer of today.

David Thackwell