On a humid day in May

On a humid day in May

The air is sticky and thick

Like clotted cream

And spits and spots of raindrops

Seep unintentionally from coalescing clouds

Brooding with moisture;

But not yet bursting.

Profusions of cow parsley plants –

Their heads now half-flowers, half-seeds –

Still bustle boisterously from verdant verges

Leaning outwards on either side of the path

As if aiming for a lacy embrace,

Whilst dimly droning dipterans

Casually circumnavigate their white floral umbrellas.

Swifts, too content to scream,

Scythe through the creamy air in long sweeps

Sifting their day’s diet from teeming aerial plankton.

Sheaves of leaves lie languid and limp:

Not exhausted by warmth

But overcome with wetness;

Leaving strings of pearly water-drops

Held gently in folded midribs.

Each droplet becomes a tiny crystal ball

Revealing a watery-eyed view

Of a humid day in May.

On the beech

I don’t think I’ve ever seen

Anything quite so green

As the sublime lime leaves -

Luminous, almost numinous,

Against an azure blue sky -

Of a Maytime beech tree:

Which always seems to beseech me

To sit with mossy bottom,

Back against bark,

Staring up into a translucent, stained-glass canopy;

Transported into tree-time…

… Until my reverie, and greenery, is broken

By fluttering blue butterfly wings,

Like a fragment from the cobalt carpet of bluebells

Lifting up from dusky earth and ascending into emerald radiance.