Blackberries

 

The autumn berries sweet from the earth
Are wandering over the graveyard fence

The hawthorns shower us with rebirth
In the spring, in a cloud of incense.
Exposing our human fallibility
Are the neat instructions by the gate.

Like a hymn of praise to gravity
The stones’ comic refusal to stand straight

And their poignant and useless pleas

Inflate us with a sense of levity.

In here, the natural mysteries

Are a consolation for our brevity

And the cosmic cycles of light and dark
Shakespeare’s arcadia – a kind park.