Five Poems by John Drudge

 

As Winter Begins

 

A sudden

Certain emptiness

Creeps into everything

As grey skies

Move in

Over the city

The neighbourhood

Quiet and aloof

Like the tears

Of a lone swallow

Falling softly

Like winter rain

Before the torrents

Of snow

Begin

Journeys

 

In the garden

Where the seeds of time

Scatter

There’s a dance

Of art and beauty

Where we recover

Lost passions

And the tender tendrils

Of love

Tears watering

Roots of resilience

Petals unfolding

Through scars

Transforming wounds

Into new versus

Where symphonies of light

Hold fast and bold

To the poetry of healing

And the journeys

Of discovery

Untold

Rural Impressions

 

The salvation

Of nature

In quiet penetration

Of fading peace

In small towns

Surviving

With restless imagination

Receding

Over subdued landscapes

Sparse impressions

And clean spare lines

Across leanness

And depressions

Dust bowls

And recoiling wheat fields

Like a birdsong

Fleeting and fine

In the moment

And then gone

Escape

 

To know what it is

To be me

In the long shadows

And the dying

Brightness

On the edge of words

In the sight line

Of certainty

Radically separated

By sentimental

Narrative

And a subtle rip

In the glazed

Summer sky

Messages

 

Through the eye

Of Satori

Into a landscape

Of pure joy

Moving into it

And through it

Ports of entry

To places unknown

Archways

Into ancient towns

Little details

In the stone

A special splash

Of colour

Across a courtyard’s

Crumbling walls

Perhaps a message of longing

From older gods

Like a painted frieze

In plaster

In Florence

Beckoning love

John Drudge is a social worker working in the field of disability management and holds degrees in social work, rehabilitation services, and psychology.  He is the author of five books of poetry: “March” (2019), “The Seasons of Us” (2019), New Days (2020), Fragments (2021), and A Long Walk (2023). His work has appeared widely in numerous literary journals, magazines, and anthologies internationally. John is also a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee and lives in Caledon Ontario, Canada with his wife and two children.