Late Spring Poem by C Richard Miles

Winter is still lingering along the muddy lane.
Frosty fingers hindering green growth of springing grain.
Snow is falling, whitening walled meadows in the dale.
With no sign of brightening, black clouds hold sleet and hail.

Rain’s rough rods’ hard hammering has turned to clods of clay
Ploughed pastures, disenglamouring bright tints with gloomy grey
And there is no enamouring as, with destructive claws,
Bedraggled cats are clamouring and scratch to come indoors.

Icy blasts are hardening soft soil until it’s stone.
All my thoughts of gardening are lost and dead and gone.
Chill winds howl unpardoning through every gap and crack
Under doorways, garnering new aches within my back.

Has some one been tinkering with weather’s thermostat?
As clammy mists float, blinkering broad views once marvelled at.
I can hear the crinkling as feet crunch frozen leaves
And my nose is wrinkling as I begin to sneeze.

Frostiness is frightening scared shoots from springing green.
Now the tension’s heightening as warmth departs the scene:
With no sign of lightening. plants face repressive strife,
For frost’s grim grip is tightening its hold on fresh, new life.

Chilly winds are whistling round crumbling dry-stone walls.
Icicles are bristling on stumbling waterfalls.
Rocks on crags split, splintering through rending ice-wedge tines.
Birds are overwintering in warmer, foreign climes.

Hoar frost swiftly fattening gives branch and twig a crust;
Frozen dewdrops spattering the lawns with silver dust:
All my teeth are chattering as coldness chills my veins.
Jack Frost’s web-like patterning is seen on windowpanes.

With insistence, battering bare, fragile blades of grass,
Hailstones hard, those clattering ball-bearing beads of glass,
Heartlessly fall, flattening frail, fragrant flowerbeds
Criminally tattering pale, primrose-petalled heads.

Though the sparkling glittering looks a charming sight
As it turns leaves littering the paths so dazzling white,
Thoughts burst bustling, flittering as round my head they blow:
Isn’t nature frittering the time when it should grow?

Though presently dissembling and dormant in its sleep,
Still nature nurtures, trembling, notions to rise and leap,
New energies assembling, full fresh from ’neath the ground,
To thrive again, resembling pure paradise, unbound.

So it sits there, simmering its plans to spring to life,
As spring’s soft sunshine’s shimmering begins to blunt the knife
Of winter’s hardness. Glimmering glints of greenness start to sprout
As, losing thoughts of lingering, shoots cast away all doubt.

Though we have been tampering, causing climate change
And, although we’re hampering earth’s wide species range,
Still new growth leaps, scampering, heedless of the rain
That has fallen, dampening, drenching its terrain.

For now the days are lengthening: with all refreshing power,
Sun’s rays return for strengthening brave, enterprising flowers
Which, as the frost is lessening attempt to raise their heads
Endowing blessed blossoming to famished flowerbeds.

So when winter’s withering destructive darkness falls
Let’s not waste time dithering for Mother Nature calls
That she is only gathering her strength to rise again
And sleeps but lightly, weathering assaults from cold and rain.

Neither disempowering sub-zero temperatures
Nor grizzled, stark skies, glowering can do their level worst
To stop spring bulbs from flowering in rainbow colours bright
And vernal, floral dowering which fills our realm with light.

Soon we will be leisuring, idling in the sun.
Sights will soon be pleasuring, as summertime has come.
We will not be measuring the days they took to bloom,
Petalled tributes treasuring as scents suffuse the room.