:

Mark Vernon Thomas

Whithorn , Scotland

 

Mark Vernon Thomas is a New Zealander living deep in the Machars, South-west Scotland. So far he has been a Classical/Improv musician, a singer of Georgian polyphony, a Gestalt Psychotherapist and a poet. He is very fond of cats.

 

Poem  written 19^th April 2020

 

 

Another sunny April day

 

This is not the season for Death.

 

Too blue. Too warm. Not enough clouds.

  The sea should be slate grey, but today

it’s silver, glittering with fractals that detach

and shatter in their eagerness to reach the shore.

 

Today the horizon is ribboned with inappropriate brightness.

  Rapeseed-yellow, gorse -yellow, more shades of

blue and green than there are names for –

the wrong colours for Death altogether.

 

Bluebell woods are purple with impatience,

  cacophonous with avian self-advertisement.

No shade, no respite; this morning shines

with a light your eyes can no longer reflect.

 

When Death finally arrives he is flustered,

 dressed too casually in a shirt

the colour of summer showers.

He offers his hand, is kind enough –

 

but really it would have been better if this

  was a darker, danker, plainer day.

 

The birds outside our window do not

stop their urgent clatter at your passing,

 

 not even for a moment.