Hear me. Let me speak to you of rounds.

It’s winter now and drops of frozen rain fall faintly

on my surface. Fleeting. Sleeting. Slush.

Somnolent. Grey and gloom entwined. Like a steel forge
with its fire long gone cold. Dormant. Bellows becalmed leaving
the sludge and slime of my depths to slumber in
the doom dark days from Samhain to the hibernal solstice.

A waiting abating time while the
glassy skein of my edges pause patiently
for days wrought of emerald shades when

spring beckons. Bellows bounce back. The
deep dark breath of winter inexorably exhaled,
The reciprocal altruism of spring solstice exudes elasticity.
Life abounds all exothermic and animated. Energy. Sound rises like a symphony as
the bellows echo the push and pull of life anew.
Greens teem. Laundered abundance reigns verdant and the bellows
bounce and boom full steam ahead.

Nature the smith that cajoles life into being. The embodiment of
ecosystem essence. Profusion and bounteous
potency, a myriad of plenty that surges into

summer that weighs heavy. Sultry. Stifling. Stagnant.
Bellows languid, lethargic. Exhausted.
Sun so strong it slaps the face of any lilies that
float on my surface. Leaves like luminous lime
parasols. Bastions of shelter for all. Sluggish
sky so hot it chokes on itself. Dragonflies live lazily.
Sashay and slide. Wings wearily winding down to land on
angelic pearl petals of iris in bloom. Gasping for air. Life only
threatens to loom larger. Vitality and vigour molasses slow
in these sun blown dog days. Pending the burnished, brassy blazonry of

autumn that summons life to slow down. Unwind.
Prepare for dormancy once more.

Ease into a sleep born on the kaleidoscope
of senescence. Leaves leave their polychromatic,
mottled, marbled mark on my frontiers. Those liminal
spaces between me and the land that houses me.
Bellows begin to breathe down. Shrinkage and
constriction as I contract in the coming chill that
heralds winter once more. Quicken to quiescence.
Year circumnavigated. A round once more.