Loving the peonies

Loving the peonies,

I held myself

in question:

how can I be so scared,

when they have

such daring?

The audacity

to bloom in

such beauty

and self-possession.

No delicacy or

diminution,

but a full

chorus revelling

in the ephemeral.

And yet, not without

wisdom –

there is nothing

hedonistic or

indulgent

about them.

Foliage of forest green

holds the memory

both ancient and

ever-present

that to choose life

is to befriend

the poetry of its

completion.

That these loving

emissaries,

boundless for a

fleeting moment,

are bound towards

an ending.

And they teach

in their being:

what is more

grievous than death

is to hide in

life’s shadow,

sitting in foreboding,

for fear that endless, ashen

sorrow is safer

than the oceanic fantasia

of living and losing.

And as the

peonies crest,

and their

petals begin to fall,

I sit with my fears,

holding them

in my palms

for as long as

I can bear,

before gently dedicating them

to the pearlescence

of the clouds passing by.

For a few weeks

For a few weeks

a question has

beckoned me,

fluttering around my

ears;

I have tried

to tease out

the answer,

sought insight.

There have been

many fleeting

intoxicating clues,

echoes deep

of my soul’s search,

but nothing concrete.

Slowly, I slipped

into a sort of

despair

as the outside world howled

at my door.

I so hate to

squander even

one second of

dearest mythical June;

yet, I was there,

consumed by

whispered relentless

fatigue

with thoughts

tending towards

darkness:

mine but not me.

I forgot

at the threshold

of transformation

that creation is

coupled

intimately

with destruction.

Whilst I still

linger in the quiet

of not knowing in

which direction

my paintbrush tends,

it is unequivocal:

I am reaching an end.

And I have an inkling

that there is much to learn

from early summer evenings;

pink, beaming,

stretching luxuriously

like a puppy belly,

and the quiet, the calm

only broken

by sweet blackbirds at dusk

gifting us to the

beauty of song

and the unmistakable

peals of poignancy.