Blog Changes

On Friday 21st December my four blogs will combine to form
JOHNS MIXED BAG BLOG
and the final posts on Now that what I call art, The Thomas Hardy Poetry Path, My Poetry Digest and Every Day a Discovery on the Net will be on Thursday 20th December
The new blog can be seen at
JOHNS MIXED BAG BLOG
johnsmixedbagblog.blogspot.com

The Five Students

The sparrow dips in his wheel-rut bath,

   The sun grows passionate-eyed,

And boils the dew to smoke by the paddock-path;

   As strenuously we stride, —

Five of us; dark He, fair He, dark She, fair She, I,

  All beating by.

The air is shaken, the high-road hot,

   Shadowless swoons the day,

The greens are sobered and cattle at rest; but not

   We on our urgent way, —

Four of us; fair She, dark She, fair He, I, are there,

   But one - elsewhere.

Autumn moulds the hard fruit mellow,

   And forward still we press

Through moors, briar-meshed plantations, clay-pits yellow,

As in the spring hours - yes,

Three of us; fair He, fair She, I, as heretofore,

   But - fallen one more.

The leaf drops: earthworms draw it in

   At night-time noiselessly,

The fingers of birch and beech are skeleton-thin

   And yet on the beat are we, —

Two of us; fair She, I. But no more left to go

   The track we know.

Icicles tag the church-aisle leads,

   The flag-rope gibbers hoarse,

The home-bound foot-folk wrap their snow-flaked heads,

   Yet I still stalk the course —

One of us -  Dark and fair He, dark and fair She - gone:

   The rest - anon.

-o0o-