GloPoWriMo 2017 - day twenty-four

Today the prompt is a poem of ekphrasis.


Margins.

In olden times the monks illustrated their
Handwritten manuscripts and also adorned them
With marginalia, pictures and visual jokes
To leaven the day of toil at a desk
In those days and in these days we still
See illustrated manuscripts of a sort whenever
We walk and notice the world around us.
We can walk in an industrial manuscript,
Decorated with brickwork, glass and concrete,
With graffiti to brighten the austerity, and
Natures little joke of dandelions and nettles.
Or we can walk in a rural manuscript
Decorated with the sunlight's glance on
The trees' new leaves, and where the waves
On the loch draw their own musical stave
To accompany the birdsong, and we
Can see the emerging bracken, curling
In imitation of life from outer space,
Teasing us with a promise of something
Spectacular and outlandish, and then
Bursting into fronds of well remembered green.

(c) 2ndwitch, 24/04/17