Feeling Blue

Feeling Blue


A few old ends of mist and cloud,
They linger still around the rim,
Where sky of some immeasurable blue
Is met by earth of less gay hue.
And though they pose no threat to me,
and even now they seem to be
Like decorations of the sky,
I still remember how I once
And many times looked up at them,
And with a voice now grown so loud
I cursed them full and deep and proud.

But now that they have gone away
I see a sight too often rare,
The blue of sky above the hills
Of this green and pleasant land.
The sun is shining bright and clear,
But I look not up at sun or sky,
For I have seen a sight more rare
Than any yet are pictured here.

For in a corner of this towns
Most northerly Council housing estate,
A gem does on the earth appear
The brilliance of new sapphire,
It visits us but once a year,
and then it stays
From April late
through May.

A product of the thriving Spring,
That tilted Earth ensures must bring
The death of cold and birth of light,
As under shade of leaf and bough,
And under the rotting relics of
The last years bloom,
There start to sprout, refreshed and new,
the small young shoot of piercing lance,
As green spikes up amidst the brown,
To carpet it in brighter sheen.


But when these shoots begin to flower,
A sight appears that rivals that
Which luckily,
Looks down on me
today.

A blue more purple than the one
which looks down on these silent woods,
And this new blue it looks to me
More vibrant, deeper and more free,
Suggestions of a different world,
While magic tunes played to the tone
of many thousand ringing bells,
Which carpet all the wood.

The distant trees now seem to take
A beauty greater and more fair,
Than any I had yet seen there,
For rising out of endless blue
They seem to be a picture new.
And possibly they now are here
In preparation for the one
that calls the month of May
Her own.

And bending down, examine now,
How finely worked the colour fresh
Is marked and with fine filigree spreads
the colour of infinity
When looked at from without.

Another time is brought to me,
By colour spreading under tree,
A memory of a water clear,
a small lagoon,
beneath the sun
of land afar
on Equator.

The rushing of its silver stream,
that pours into a deep clean pool,
The splashing sound as silver drops
Be’diamon’d twinkle in the sun,
A myriad of unseen shades, which,
If looked on with the right true slant,
Will then reveal the glittering colours
Of the sun when seen through rain.
And laughter falling also as
the Fish slips from a rock.

And then the forest far away
Provokes with name the hidden store
That behind the walls of mountains dwells,
And soon that pool had turned to grey,
And splashing now with sound of rain,
We run away on aching feet
and hide beneath
the large green leaves
That nature has provided.

The joy that now dwells in my heart,
Will soon be gone if I do part,
From wood of trees in lake of blue.
I wonder if perhaps I should,
By plucking one or three or more,
Keep somewhere memory of this wood.
When freshly picked a bluebell will
still keep the lilting hue that mists
and clouds the sight of leaves by the
Suggestion of mortality.

But only one or three alone,
Is likened to a chip of stone
That sparkles and reflects a light
But has none of the beauty there,
The beauty of that heart so fair,
The light within a diamond.

And after but two days or so,
The crisp blue bell on straight green stalk,
Begins to die, as brown suffuses
‘Cross the almost violet hue
of life.

The withered leaves are all that’s left
Of memory that was once so clear.
And now as I lay down to rest
The spark of joy that I was blessed
To see and feel within my soul
Is nothing now,
as blue that once
was proud,
now bows,
its head to drying brown.






But though I have no longer here,
The joy that seeing leaf of tree
Reflect the sky from both its sides,
I think no more of fallen past,
But now with greater joy shall see
The woods again,
When Spring again,
Shall surely come to pass.

And always when a sight we see,
A treasure to our minds, we feel
The need to show our greed.
And stealing some we take away,
or so we think, a piece of our own joy.
But pretty soon that treasured piece,
will end up on the mantel piece,
as dull and dusty it now lies
A constant presence to our eyes.
We never wish to throw away
That which surely on some day
In unknown future, by its art
Destroy the joy that once it had
been part of.

No, better is the joy that we
Can see for only precious time,
The stolen minutes, too short hours,
To spend among the leafy bowers.

So fresh and rare,
beyond compare,
the colours there
will then appear,
and floating with the elfin song
of bells that ring beneath the feet
of bare foot lords, who now forget,
The gold and silver of their trees,
Bewitched by an enchanted sea,
Of rather different hue.

Now looking round I seem to feel
That sky and earth begin to twine
their colours in unending swirl
And giddy now I start to sink
Into the hue.

And now I think I’m drowning,
Drowned in blue.

And so I drift away.