The Spring Transaction
Well – after David, Chad and Winnol
(saints, all of them), what can you expect?
One day I will be seen in sudden unexpected haze of red;
the tall tree branches blush with adolescent life about to burst.
Another day I’ll fly across the skies in drawn out wisps of white,
high, so high that you will barely sense me there,
there at the edge of vision.
Maybe I’ll be blue, so blue it hurts to see me and you’ll shade your eyes.
Then, I’ll hide inside the hawthorn buds
and burst out to surprise you when one cold, clear, moon-horned morning,
as you drive a frosted road,
you see that old-new haze of sweetest green
and know that I’ve been working all this while.
But somewhere else I’ll take my dues,
in payment for such painful beauty.
In a quiet room at 3 a.m.
deep in the coldest watches of the springtime night,
I’ll sit and watch and wait,
as, from its frail and time-worn house, an old soul slips away
and flows into my arms.
Chris Michaelides was born in a village that gradually became an outer London suburb. She now lives in as small and remote a village in East Anglia as is compatible with the daily journey in to work.