Midsummer (Part 1)

Midsummer has no name:
Beauty cannot be boxed
Roaming free and wild
Where it chooses it stops.

A blackbird in a tree
A bumble-bee
With beauty bold
Searching shady arbours for a nest
Disturbing hawthorn-blossom
Making petal volleys:
Newly-laid, pink and
Fragile on the soil.
Frailty that will tomorrow brown and wither.
Can beauty be another?

And must I wait another year
For them to come again
Through winter, snow and rain?
One night is all they stay
And the bee I'll not see again.

Midsummer (Part 2)

Lanterns in the trees
Casting out their light
Marking out their territories
Before the end of night.

Breathe in deeply:
Night is nearly over.
Yet the longest of them all
Have I borne in Midsummer
When Nature opens up her buds
And I have yet to flower.