Winter
What cruel curse is it that commands us live
a quarter of our lives in frozen time
where leaf-bare skeletons of summer give
no shield nor shade to buds upon the vine.
This was not always so, and we did thrive
as green, growing things in a warmer clime.
We lived, loved, laughed in play and were alive
in warmth filled light and happiness sublime.
that was how we lived then, in days gone past
on shootings, bloomings, flowerings of spring
but now cold is our teacher, how naught lasts;
again, loss after loss, it shows dying
is the doom of all living things, a task
to be finished before next spring’s coming.
A Grayling
It is time I rise and go to the stream
with my flies and a hope that there I find
in the water a new hatch of lacewings
struggling to the surface and mostly blind
to what cruises beneath them, a grayling.
It is she, the queen of the stream, I mind
she and her wading courtier lapwing
who in their shared stalking are of a kind.
I watch and I wait, assessing the case
slowly swinging my trotting rod to cast
but then there is a swirl, a whirl, a race
the grayling circles, the lapwing darts past
I stay where I am, firm frozen in place
a disarmed hunter transfixed to the last.
J. B. Fite (Ph.D. Cantab.) is a dyslexic, jobbing chemist who lives on an island in the Gulf of Mexico. Through writing poetry, he has been able to lower his blood pressure to the point he could throw his medication away, that and the gin.