November
Drier than it has ever been
In its meteorological silence
Red roses bloom
In the year 709
From the founding of Rome
Ab urbe condita
Our 46 BCE
Julius
Great reformer, soon to be murdered
reset the days
To end the ‘wandering years’
And its calendrical
Confusion
Yet drift the days still did
By 3, said Bede in 800
By 7 or 8
Thought Roger Bacon much later
Until again, from that same
Rome
Pontifical proclamation
Added 10 days to the year 1582
In an instant
So that anniversaries and birthdays
Were missed
But human order now matched
The flow
Of the cosmos.
Yet now
in November
The red rose blooms
Calendrical days do not veer
But earth itself
We reread the ancient apocalypses
For the like of their
strange signs
Flood and hurricane
Pestilence, war
Melting ice
Seasons slip
False springs occur
We untruth the world
And hide from it
Saying that it, not us
Is fake
And still, the red rose
Blooms.
24 November 2019
Cedar Wings Cottage
Dry earth and cloudless sky
* Ab urbe condita, from the founding of the city (Rome), Compare the Byzantine ‘etos kosmou,’ marking its calendrical year from the creation of the cosmos. In similar fashion to the work of Julius and Gregory, the International Committee on Stratigraphy is considering a date for our current geologic age, the Anthropocene, most likely dating from the deposition of radionuclides around the globe caused by nuclear testing from the 1950s.
Mountaineity 