Lay for the Day: 13th March

Lay for the Day13th March

A seasonal poem.

Grey Spring

Grey spring, and the lovers in arms
tickle and pinch in their lunch-break,
birds sing at night like car alarms
and flies half-wake
at noon, staggering in the rain
amid the rooftop’s greening weeds.
Motley pigeons pirouetting
make a prelude to begetting,
take up their mumbling amorous strain
insistently till she concedes.

Pushing the jonquils left and right,
March, the month of many weathers,
menaces their slender, bold height.
On stiff feathers
the city kestrel mewing
hangs overheard, then swoops away.
May no lovers fondly petting
make overtures to regretting
and nobody’s buttons’ undoing
be theirs, dear lord of love, we pray.

John Gibbens
from The Smell of Thyme

The Lay Reader: an archive of the poetic calendar