4 Seasonal Rituals by Adrian Rogers

Adrian Rogers
1—AUTUMN PROCESSIONAL

Autumn, processional
seasonal in many guises
is a shape changer
makeup artist
of extraordinarily transient dexterity,
Andante Con Moto
into sunset singing transitional
blood-scarlet, yellow surprises
turned russet, stranger
than fictional dreaming
diminishing, fading
when light has a clarity of definition
and a coolly sharpening edge

marked stretto
when winds pressing the sedge
and water spreading
under sunsets flamed vermilion
black cloud framed
splash-paint,
firing above gold overspreading
pale flashing a rippling Allegro
rough-stippling fluidity
into impermanence
and emotion is recollected
not always in tranquillity
falling onto lost opportunities
on leaves way-swept
all over creek and river runs in spate.

Storms early and late
scour land and water
hurrying detritus into time’s streaming
accented
world without end
Presto!
Speed frittering away
on colour skittering themes
before a processional ritardando
turns recessional
into winter sleep mode’s
harvested aftermath,
trees skeletally exposed
earth bared
after high wire balancing
flocking migrant singers
fly into winter’s onset
and Adagio
is the sky’s lead heavy threat.


2—RECESSIONAL WINTER

Winter’s slow paced, bleak
Adagio Sostenuto for strings
is long held
starkly overlapping chords
with only
descending harp notes dropping
like frosted ice particles
punctuating Samadhi
interlocking a stillness out of time
seeking no ending
or canticles in eulogy

where memories are swords
winter is length, shortness,
life, death and time
slow leaking across hemispheres
solstice capturing
at the Hitching Post
a retreating sun
turning it back upon itself
as a new moon too weak
against the dark
to rouse a wind’s harsh singing
seeks out fires of festival
stomping the boards accelerando
distracting shadow dancing
haunted minds
accentuating
a need for seasonal courtesies,
the bowing in of longer days.

Winter’s sun-fire rays
once bleeding evening red
flare briefly white
in cold dawn’s dazzling blaze
and icy brilliance
mutes the heart clock’s beat
Allargando
stiff chilled, responding
to Tarot’s death card blending
the Reaper’s symbols
his living and dying forms
by a sunset river circling
eternally beyond the winter’s ice,
calling...

‘let the sleeping seed
dying into rising life
with the iron hard need
of winter met be the strife
of spring’s wild onset, freed
from time and rife
with possibilities.’


3—RONDEAUX DU PRINTEMPS

Spring’s seasonal resonances
green growing into light
bursting
and water jewel/bright swift
flashing
over Winter’s monochrome
out-sparking
are breath and blood
Venus un-girdled
Shamanic drumming
and The Rite of Spring

‘pulse blossoming
into thunderous flourishes
when root stock multiplying
into dawn light cherishes
the sounding Word, ringing
the changes...’

a rondo pianistic finale
beginning the unpredictable
bud into pink/white blooming
briefly flirting colour singing
Allegro Vivace
fulfilling the urge
and sun powered surge
over water, sound and silence
drum caught
lassoed,
poco rallentando...

‘ringing the changes
when a seed self nourishes
the living exchanges
burgeoning from a hidden
thirst for maturation
first into Wisdom.’

Spring will down-wind
copper remain in the soil
Venus testify
in star shaped wanderings
Summer reap her seasonal spoils
Vulcan hold the world
in his toils, and light’s
expanding scope around
a Temple’s daisy-chain like
dancing unity
anchor hope, when the Temple
of the few becomes
the Temple of the many.


4—SARABAND OF SUMMER

Love beneath the summer stars
between above
and below
coordinating with
the River in the Sky,
celebrations
heat exhaling from embodied earth
into a cooling night
when chanting slows the steps
Andante Molto
of a ritual Saraband

liturgies of heart and hand
of heated blood
drawn down
into a solstice passionless
by step and swing
a poise distilled
before the annealing drought
of long-lit days

when green in many shaded rays
primal deceiver
down-weighs ascension’s
evidence
of unseen presences
hopes breathed
out of a land to beige attenuated
and from the stars.

Light and shadow bars
way-goers
by black towered summer storms
wet and dry
dark, light, fitfully contrasting
clarity and haze,
the Grim Reaper’s contradiction
death with life
and seeds of everlastingness.

Within the consciousness
of passing days
beyond our solstice time
‘tempo rubato’
shadows the singing
echoing a summer’s ending,
maturation
in the lees of all our knowing
a glass turned down
recessional

and harvest’s ceremonial closing.

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