a poem for every occasion

Two months ago, the rolling green of Middle England was covered in purple and I wrote on the blog that the rosebay willow herb is one of my favourite summer flowers.

Today, the countryside is every bit as green, but the bright aspirational flower spikes have long gone and the feathery thought-like seeds have been carried away on the wind.

Nothing is left but a dried up scribble of empty seed pods, which perfectly matches the barren tangle of my mind at the moment.

I may not have a new poem to post, but I do have several decades of poetry archives to choose from, and that means that there’s almost always something to fit the mood.

This is a repost, but none the worse for that, I think:

Where are the words?

Where are the words
I need?

Like a spendthrift
I have squandered them,
scattering them on the green lawns
of forty summers,
frittering them
on trivialities.

I look in books,
in dictionaries and lexicons,
but they are blank as my notebook:
empty of inspiration.

The wind has carried away
all the words,
borne them on the warm air,
like so many seagulls.

Like a prodigal,
I am left destitute,
my tongue, dry,
licking at stale crusts.