Late Spring

[Brigflats]

Is it a spring death?
The ball of sun,
Fat and red.
Over the pub

It hangs.
Something else alerts me to the summer
Bleeding backwards into vacant trees.
A smell of inverted seed,
Chips and chicken.
Or the white pavement spray,
Or the bindweed curling into thin blue.

Our dying star
And our sullen drunkeness:
Wasps curling their stings in,
Bother of the repeated action.
Half heat half naked,
The park rhododendrons levitate
Over unremarkable dust.

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Honest criticism very gratefully received!

[hillwalker]

Very much a British Spring bank Holiday kind of poem – summer suddenly hijacking spring and catching everyone out.

One senses the discomfort of the season, when perhaps we should be rejoicing. And the image of a red sun, not necessarily a beautiful sunset but a dying star.

Some of the imagery was a little difficult to fathom out – ‘smell of inverted seed’ and ‘bother of the repeated action’ have got me scratching my head.

But I did enjoy reading this – it's not a conventional poem about the seasons but rather a snapshot of how we react to it.

H

[Jerrybaldy]

it felt apocalyptic to me and chicken and chips juxtaposed against our dying star is right up my street and unlike the dust, remarkable.