The Cherry and the Vine

-The Cherry And The Vine -

The pilgrim and the monk barter at the door,

While the heel stone, kicked, heals

From stones flicked and trod upon the floor.

At the dawning of the age - which is the sage?

The cherry or the vine? Lugubriously entwined,

An ancient story, filled with sweet fruits,

The revelry of this banquets true glory.

I have heard the skylark

Call the golden chariot from out the storm,

And watched him chase the zephyr with his song,

Until the air, in rhapsody, filled my heart and soul in epiphany.

I have seen a hundred crows 

Murder a million shafts of gold,

And bold, flock into the reaches of the thunderclap,

To bow down in unison to Ceres ancient call.

The rise and fall, teetering upon the edge of the day.

I have watched as the honey bee, my friend,

Danced between the pistils of delight.

Banks of wildflowers, 

Deposited upon the waters edge,

An oasis of sacred sanity in the madness of modernity.

And in the end my friend,

To rest beneath your ancient boughs, the hours.

The cherries ripened in their season, plucked,

For the celebrants of nature's creation.

A Bacchanalian misadventure, 

Still young upon the vine.

To lift an ancient curse, 

In revelry, and time.

The season spent, I bent my heart to the wind,

A somnolent breeze, eased, through gnarled limbs.

Selene dipping her redolent toes into the clouds,

A repose, that every wounded heartbeat would allow.

Spring has gone, 

And Summer too has Autumn in her sights,

Like a farmer who wills the vagrant from his land,

The ravens hand will not be stilled for long.

But these are the days of the long sun,

Where neither pilgrim nor monk are king.

For in the still places,

The byways of those redolent spaces,

The ancient cherry still ripens,

Wrapped in Dionysian splendour,

Crowned, with the perfumed clutch of a wild rose.

- RMP 2018