Finding the keys by Robin Robertson.

Finding the Keys

• The set seed and the first bulbs showing.
• The silence that brings the deer.
• The trees are full of handles and hinges;
• you can make out keyholes, latches in the leaves.
• Buds tick and crack in the sun, break open
• slowly in a spur of green.
•  
• The small-change colours of the river bed:
• these stones of copper, silver, gold.
• The rock-rose in the waste-ground
• finding some way to bloom. The long
• spill of birdsong. Flowers, all
• turned to face the hot sky. Nothing stirs.
•  
• That woody clack of antlers.
• In yellow and red, the many griefs of autumn.
• The dawn light through amber leaves
• and the trees are lanterned, blown
• the next day to empty stars.
• Smoke in the air; the air, turning.
•  
• Under a sky of stone and pink
• faring in from the north and promising snow:
• the blackbird.
• In his beak, a victory of worms.
• The winged seed of the maple,
• the lost keys under the ash.

           ..... by Robin Robertson 

• [from his collection Hill of Doors which has been shortlisted for the T S Elliot prize.]