Tuesday Poem - Perennial

PERENNIAL

For days it rains

hysterically

the sky -

inconsolable.

Storm water drains

gulp and hiccup

rivers billow

biblically

soggy leaves cling

to each other.

We dream of summer.

Rain rises through the floor,

runs clear deltas down the wall.

Faintly, faintly as constellations

emerge at day's cusp

a fleur-de-lis pattern seeps

up through the paint

printing across the wall

the careful curves

in a grandfather's garden:

white irises

which, slick with rain,

months ago,

defiantly vital

flowered again

because the season demanded

some offering between their rising from

and returning to earth

Now, winter at its most emphatic,

here they are

ghosting up that ancient insignia

through my walls.

They begin to retreat when the rain clears.

The day is out of the blue

I expected watery light

not this blaze.

I expected doves with new green shoots

not three ducks

wings a-whirr

swooping from the wrung sky

and the smell of silt

and evaporation

Poppy Haynes

Poppy Haynes recently completed a BA(Hons) in English and Theatre Studies. She co-edits the poetry section of Critic and is active in the Dunedin live-poetry scene. She has had poems published in The Listener, North & South, World Literature Today and the Otago Daily Times, and is also the author of two plays.

"One day I noticed that the pattern of the painted-over wallpaper was starting to seep through my bedroom walls. The image resonated with me, and even before the rest of the poem was written I had a strong feeling it would be to do with survival and regeneration, the redemptiveness of natural cycles, the newness of a rained-out world." PH April 2010

You will find more of Poppy's poems at Deep South and on the ODT website.

For more Tuesday Poems, click here.

Thank you, Poppy.