Setting sun

The sun streams through the trees,

catching insects floating lazily

in its gaze.

 

It lights the leaves up gold;

an impossible, unrepeatable gold,

found only in that minute

as the sun

is at that perfect height

and even the clouds part for it,

stop what they’re doing and watch,

not wanting to miss a single moment

as the sun completes the day’s journey

and sinks gradually, finally,

behind that branch, the hill,

down past the horizon, to make way

for the stars and the rising moon

who also light up the trees, but more quietly,

reservedly, as if they know their audience is

sleeping, tired out by the youthful antics of the sun,

unaware of what a show the night would give,

if only someone would turn up to watch.

 

 

Bird

It flits and dips,

as if it’s searching

for something lost, or perhaps,

never really there.

 

It is frantic

but at the same time,

somehow serene

as though it’s happy to look,

for now,

because it knows the prize will be worth it,

and then, it can eagerly spread the word

with so much childish wonder.

 

In the dappled sunlight,

the blue in its wings glints,

glimmers

and flashes, as it swoops through the light

and disappears, melting into the brown-

or is it black?- of all its other feathers

when it darts through the dark,

the shadows.

 

Was that startle of

turquoise ever really there?

 

The bird continues its

convoluted path, dives into the sun-

and there it is, another flash of bright

as it plunges into the shade of the trees,

searching, searching.