End of Hot Day

END OF HOT DAY

Midsummer Georgica NSW

End of hot day. Fierce sun has vanished now.

Yet still bright twilight lights west-lying cloud-

Forms spreading yellow-greying in pale vastness.

Are they the heralds of new rain in darkness?

A final butterfly of day flits by,

Above the seed-tipped grasses, summer-high.

Black crows flap towards the heights of night-safe trees,

Soft-rustling topmost leaves in slightest breeze.

Now eastern hills are briefly tinged with gold-

The Midas touch of day's last-passing role.

Above them crescent moon is growing bright

In sky that's fading towards the rise of night.

The heat is falling and the world's inclined

To pass into the shadow side of time

Where stars will show the darker, cooling hours,

Bring some retreat from blaze of solar power.

And in the cooling darkening of sight,

I ponder in the passing to the night

How storms and rains have saved the summer here

From drought's despair and greater fire-fear.

How long will fortune's blessing last? How long?

I hear of terror, fire-born, beyond

The scant horizon of my turning days-

Devouring, roaring flames, the deadly blaze.

I hear of fiercer storms with fury from

The trapping of the energy from sun;

As change, without a harbour or a haven,

Becomes our sadness like a war from heaven.

WAITING FOR THE CHANGE

WAITING FOR THE CHANGE

21st November, 2015 Georgica NSW

These are last days of spring

but summer's now-

from blue-white sky

unceasing heat pours down,

surrounding all the grass and trees,

still green by ground of recent rain,

now feeling solar power.

So summer time will stretch the hours

that reach towards forty by degrees

and now the shade beneath the small

red cedar trees seems dark

and other trees hide wallabies

in stillness and in shadow.

And all the brightness narrows eyes;

and all the world seems bleached with light.

Some know we have to grow, decrying

all limits of reality...

but I have heard this day

of heated forests, world-wide, dying.

A southern wind arises now

sways tall gum trees, makes many leaves

endow air flow with rustling sound.

Its coolness promises a passing

of such vast heat for some relief

and I am glad to wait for change

predicted so

as weather-wise belief.

Yet in my heart there shines no gladness

in looking towards a world to be

warmed by waste gas beyond its order-

and I'm not glad to wait for change

to that new world grown wild and strange.