Tumbleweed
Tumble, tumble, tumbleweed,
Contrived in all but dance,
For all I see of tumbleweed
Is a gifted mime of chance.
Lapse the rural Cooper’s eye
In hazy bygone lanes,
Tumbleweed will bounce his way
Twixt lonely picture frames.
Behind the walls and crackled doors,
The infant of echo’s seed,
Peers through aimless panes of clay
At outcast tumbleweed.
But beneath the dowdy jungle mesh,
The dust will raise alert,
For all that’s just by tumbleweed
Is to enclave the inert.
Tumble, tumble, tumbleweed,
To see you pass in carriage,
To see you in your languorous joust,
Afraid to delve in marriage,
Afraid to brace the fecund straits
That bore the dusty chide,
But instead to laze in Bowery chains
Where tumbleweeds do hide.
first published in CFUK summer 2005