Poetry

Seasoned

Growing up in Australia,
I saw, but didn’t ‘see’, the seasonal changes,
The effects of temperature and light,
The landscape palette:
Summer’s orange wash,
Winter’s mauve hues.
I gave little thought to
Bird life feeding one day
Then disappearing the next
Before the skeletal starkness,
The muted cold of winter.
I responded reflexively to the thaw,
Welcoming daylight’s edge toward Spring.
I heard birds return with a song and a screech,
Signaling the seasonal shift.
The warbling, glottal throaty harmonies of currawongs,
The antiphony undersong of dawn,
The variegated native grasses,
The masses of wildflowers decorating roadside and grassland
Were the unrealized backdrop to my life.
Living in San Antonio, Texas,
Seasons assumed new meaning.
From Spring to Fall
As daylight lingered,
Faded,
Skeins of bats unfurled,
In the unyielding darkness of caves,
Responding to a pre-programmed call.
In twilight, they emerged,
In whorls,
Flying overhead,
Wave after wave,
Devouring in a frenzy the insect horde,
The sky a flickering canvas of bat shadows and twilight.
In Autumn,
Monarch butterflies migrated,
In a light flurry of stained-glass wing,
Southward,
Sensing their way to roosting havens
Before the freeze of winter.
In Spring
Flocks of birds,
Over two miles long,
Peppered the sky,
Surged on the pulse of air currents,
Northward bound,
Fireworks bursts of black against the brilliant sky.

Life:
Goings and comings,
Ebb and flow,
The dying and blossoming of nature,
Dark moments when all seems lost,
Light days as hope returns.
Dark lines, shades, and shadows
In Life’s landscape,
Do more than focus the eye,
They define the scene and seen.

©Christine M Knight