"After-comers cannot guess the beauty been."‘Binsey Poplars’, Gerard Manley-Hopkins SJ, 1879

 

 

the emptiness of moonlight
strikes me dumb
shadows flicker like an old film
cats eerily call, each to each,
cats yowl, strike a pose,
frozen, with fur mantled by shadow;
so much idiosyncratic beauty given to us –
see the clouds scoop across the face
of the moon as the night-sky speeds by

rain blown into the empty air
water running into my face, down my back
rain soaks the bushes, the cats
hide, rain eases away,

the sky rumbles
a storm approaches,
moonlight reflected
in a single raindrop

I am drawn into open spaces
to worship with the druids
with those magnificently ‘primitive peoples’
who knew the motions of the moon and stars
who venerated mother nature as a holy creation
who cried and laughed, kissed and died
beneath this same milky moon

modern humans do nothing but:
kill the kindest of our animal friends,
desecrate and pollute the living green,
work ceaselessly to destroy Eden’s garden,

the richer we are,
the less we dream
the more obscene
we are.