Three Poems by Anthony Ward

Perambulation

 

I love to take woodland walks

Amongst avenues of afternoons

When the virescent canopy

That was once a natural nave of trees

Lies asunder

A carpet of brisk leaves

Mulching cadaverous colours

All their the art drawn out

Their chromatic currency spent

Blanched the breeze

Rifling the sense

Leaving blankets of emotion

Both ensanguine and antique

When cool autumnal nights cause the

Tannin to turn leaves in assemblage to atrophy

And shadows gambol from elongated horizons

Within the glare of gardens

Ablaze with autumn berries

Beguiled of beauty

Blinding and blending

Connotations of combustible colour

Respiring ripe

And fruitful like the apples

Both succinct and succulent

Causing branches to droop

As we harvest thoughts

Thankful in our thinking.

 

 

October

 

When the year turns vintage

The atmosphere matures

The sun warm in the cool breeze

Swaying the bronzed chestnuts

Tanned after summer’s searing

Shedding their plumage

Leaves rustling along russet roads

Creating dusky umbered paths

Where tawny owls abide

Amongst cindered remnants

Upon grey cold pavements

Comforting melancholic embers

From caustic passions

Now past and inciting

From this season most inviting.

 

 

Spring

 

Snowdrops abundant

Around bare stumps

Drooping like icicles,

Thawing rivers of blossom

Flowing through forest floors

After the silence of night

Resounds with an exhalation

Of trees sighing with relief

After bearing their breath

Amidst the chthonian chill.

 

From the bludgeoning snow

Comes the burgeoning spring

Restoring life to what once lived,

The pipit having defied the cuckoo

Singing along with the skylark

To herald the new season.

 

The albumen nestling upon the yolk fleeced gorse

Gorging on verges of fields flocked with daffodils

Rising in verdurous clumps

Their perianth surrounding coronas

Like rays of sunlight rising from the hills

While pugnacious hares lay their eggs in meadows

And frogs spawn in the marsh.

 

While march meanders from the pewits pinch

Into the opening month

When the heavens shower the earth

Enticing the flourishing advance

Towards the assault of summer.

 

 

Anthony tends to fidget with his thoughts in the hope of laying them to rest. He has managed to lay them in a number of literary magazines including Enhance, Drunk Monkeys, Speech Therapy, Turbulence, Ginger Piglet, Torrid Literature Journal and The Rusty Nail, amongst others.