Listening Meditation.

Birds overhead
 and the rain sweeping violently over the roof in sprays
 snatched by the winds and torn away
 then lashed on the rooftops again.
 Birds fly over
 giggling 
 and calling as they pass.
 The cat doesn’t like it.
 Meows
 a startled birdish chirrup
 and jogs over to me.
 In the left ear
 gas burning
 in muted and droning roar.
 To the right
 the rain dashed on the window glass
 spittered
 closer than the swirling roar inside the walls 
 beneath the ceiling.
 Birds call overhead
 again
 these screeching and squarked calls
 bickering as they go.
 Now footsteps 
 in another house’s hallway
 (though there’s nobody home)
 thumping
 they vibrate through the floorboards
 and rumble
 in the floors.
 No voices
 only the birds calling and bickering
 and giggling 
 as they go. 

After Sunfall.

Up above, from tall, invisible trees, two birds call-and-answered in delicate, dawn-like song. There was a crisp freshness to the air that like the birds spoke of morning. The sky was the shade of holiday-beginnings — of taxis caught under early-morning skies. On this topsy-turvy day, tilting at the turn of the seasons, I could almost smell the blossom promised by the bare, sticky branches of the neat street-trees. Their austere nude winter limbs were soon to be transformed into fleeting beauties, dressed in sweet pink tulle, white lace, and glinting emerald buds. In the garden, winter-blooming bulbs perfumed the air, sweet and cloying. They’d pushed themselves inevitably onwards, upwards, through the soil and the old weathered wood-chips and the nights’ frosts. I’d watched them growing, determined and mysterious, and wondered who had planted them and how long ago. Once close enough to the sun they sprung into tight white clusters of pretty, simple flowers and bravely sang of spring while the winter raindrops clung coldly to the air.