This Dewy Grass

This Dewy Autumnal Grass

This dewy grass reflects a warming Sun:
Small spheres to prism rays
With each slow move -
There, a clear-sea-blue
As when from beach to end-of-reef I - we together - swam
Where an ocean's island calmed
And each day a so-brief bliss
Lasts.

But it was cold, last night
With no woman to warm by love given
Received
And there was only the Owl, only the Owl, calling into blackness
Outside
And a tiredness to take me restless to those early hours
When the ageing body knows its age
And rises slowly, too slowly, to begin again
Another day
Of work.

Yet, in moments,
A certain calmness calms:
Grown, growing - uninvited, unexpected - as the warmth of this morning
Measures out six seasons since her death
While the toiling species toils
Trapped
In Time through ego;
No gentle wisdom, no empathy, there
Only a painful birthing of colourless dull abstractions.

So I sigh, one prism so briefly placed on Earth
Among some dewy grass.

DW Myatt