BY CHRISTIAN WARD
Copyright is held by the author.
1.
The nightingale refereed spring
with its song: a whistle to days
stretched like pizza dough,
clouds posing for the camera,
dew-spritzed meadows, freshly
laundered hills and fields,
streams languid like sunbathing cats,
matcha-green ponds stuffed
with an aspic of frogspawn,
snails with caramel shells.
2.
Yellow card to showers interrupting
the day like unwanted emails.
Red to the hail as unexpected as bad news,
a downpour rambunctious
like an overactive toddler, overdone roasts,
daffodils lasting a week, snow
creeping on stage like a cartoon baddie,
summer laughing loudly in the audience.
***
Christian Ward is a U.K.-based poet with recent poetry in Free the Verse, The Pinnacle, The Passionfruit Review, Pink Apple Press, Loch Raven Review, The Shore and The Westchester Review. He was longlisted for the 2023 National Poetry Competition, shortlisted for the 2024 Alpine Fellowship Poetry Prize, and won the first 2024 London Independent Story Prize for poetry.
