SPRING STARS

SPRING STARS

September, 2010 Georgica NSW

September dusk drifts over fields,

green valleys, forests and long hills

and lays, like mist, upon the scene

a dreaming tenebrosity.

The sheen that was slips back to last

west-fading blue of skyward sight

and coolness and the call of dark

speak with the syllables of night.

Though land is losing all of light,

upon the southwest, paling sky

new crescent rides as lunar smile

with Venus high: white-gleaming eye.

While from fast darkening, near this,

as stars both Mars and Saturn shine-

all jewels lit with radiance

reflected from a vanished sun.

From world beneath, still shadowing,

wild drumming of cicadas crowds

the air to drown my ears with sound-

last chorus veiled from hunting wings.

In vagueness, from my seeing’s verge,

a sudden flash sparks, low then high,

around dark trees and weeds and bushes,

long grass and dim-white crofton flowers…

and there another, and there- and there-

all through the gloom of cooling air,

I see the drifting stars go by-

the green-gold gleam of fireflies.

Like shifting constellations through

the ever-growing dark they pass-

light signs to breed in spring’s increase

that rising life may never cease.

So weary from my winter time

I view enchanting shimmering

and feel again this magic rhyme

that sings to me from stars of spring.