Philip Gross
The first of Spring
and all the town’s magnolias have set their fuses.
Lit their small tight pilot lights of pink.
Then a pause
before one day, street by street and
only slightly out of sync,
they flare
into the arms of the wind.
Grand arias of self-abandonment,
a performance that’s its own applause,
bouquets showering the stage…
till there it stands, our tree, half bare
amongst the mashup of its glory moment
on the primrose lawn,
a children’s birthday tea run riot,
pink blancmange and custard everywhere.
I used to find it frivolous –
too much and too flimsy altogether.
I was wrong. See this, an old man
pacing out his day’s Tai Chi. Whichever
way he moves, that arm’s-sweep upwards
like broadcasting seed in slow motion,
the torque of a turn,
the tree knows how this goes.
And goes, year after year.
It holds this, written in the bones
of its wide gestures, spreading
slower than we can perceive,
for us all, for our need
to be held, if only
by the shapes we have left in the air,
for all we’re holding, all we’re letting go.
Philip Gross lives in South Wales and has published nearly 30 collections of poetry in 40 years, including several collaborations across the arts. The Shores of Vaikus (Bloodaxe, 2024) is a creative re-inhabiting of Estonia, the birthplace of his father, whose story he explored in earlier collections, like Deep Field.
andotherpoems.com 