©

Fuji Cherry

A dowdy, dwarfish shrub most of the year,
slow-growing lichen leprous on each bough,
breaks out a thousand buds when April’s here
and shamelessly proclaims ‘Come, see me now’.
Before the ranks of summer march this way
with flags and colours, banners, painted silk,
the eye is held so tight it cannot stray
by petal petticoats as pale as milk.
Her thousand flowers are a just excuse
to throw a party for admiring guests,
discerning friends who travel where they choose
to linger by the loveliest and best.
Excess of beauty surely shortens life;
it has its private purposes and ends;
it is the cause of jealousy and strife;
it brings out rivalry between its friends;
but this is true: the brighter burns the flame
the sooner gone; great beauty is the same
and when it dies our envy turns to shame.



Springer spaniels

‘You have to save them from themselves’ he said
and truly so
for into every hedge and ditch they go
but then he said and it was just as true
‘You need someone to save yourself from you'.

© roy ballard 2012
Triple spiral

By River Boyne they laid a tomb of rocks,
rocks great and small, all overlain with earth,
with one straight passage leading to its heart
where strikes the weakest sunlight of the year.
Rays of the solstice sun and only they
can fall upon the symbol waiting there:
an endless triple-spiral cut in stone.
Carved by a hand remote in time and tongue,
its years are thousands yet we read it still
and in its clarity it seems to speak
of trinity and endless union.
Writer in stone, we mayflies of the stream
salute you.


Street View

Like a lover, lost, forlorn,
I google up Street View
to find the place where I was born
which might be made anew
or still have those same, happy paths
my childish knowing knew.

Memory retains the best:
the woody hill, the stream,
things for a tiny time possessed
that now seem like a dream
and brief as motes that flash and go
upon a random beam.

A childish day is like a year;
my years are like a day.
What’s gone before is all too clear
for time tears veils away
and ancient have become the things
that I hold dear today.

© roy ballard 2012

A life is very like a holiday

Straight from a winged womb, passport controlled,
sent down a tunnel which no one gainsays
we come into a world both new and old
where things are said and done in unknown ways.
The language that we hear is honky-tonk;
the words we speak break every sort of rule.
The traders drink cassis and blanc de blanc
as we set off for loaves in morning’s cool
where those magnificents in fire machines,
the pompiers, at lunchtime take their ease
in scented shadows beneath evergreens,
on canvas beds, consuming loaves and cheese
while gorgeous girls pluck figs and give you one
and all is over soon as it’s begun.




Daffodils

They all wear the paper ruff,
the six-fold yoke of April, cruel lord.
They flaunt the colours of their noble lines
on herald trumpets coloured orange, red
or sulphur yellow or the palest peach,
exclusive ensigns of ancestral dye.
For only those well-born
are fit to dandy in his dire court,
to bend and bow before the shifting winds
of chancy April;
who brings hail despite the sun;
breaks necks despite beauty;
and of a sudden often lays them low.

© roy ballard 2012

To the Blackdown Hills in February
Three hundred miles we drove all day
along the busy motorway
until the hills began to steep
and green-eyed snowdrops, full of sleep,
came out from winter beds to stare,
to smile and tell us we were there.

But we were only exiles three
who could not keep their company;
at home we were but could not stay
for we were of the motorway
where hangs the hawk on threads of steel
and life hangs on the steering wheel.

When first we came to make our way
upon the busy motorway
we turned our backs upon the hills
of February daffodils
that flourish there with simple art ;
we had, alas, to grow apart.