The Spot

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Spot

 

 

The black spot came on a sunny day.

It was small but full as a school for ants

each one learning to swarm, to eat, to

serve the next. Where will I go when they

finish with me, in autumn rain when

I fall like a leaf

from the tree of my life.

 

All my souls will be flying on the wind,

a storm of stories ahead of the wavering night.

I trace with a crow's feather the map

they travel on my skin 

the winding and the blowing away. Which

dark bird dropped it, what ink has dripped it

on time's page, the black spot that came

 

on a sunny day

and will not go away. 

March 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for the Word Garden Word List

at Shay's Word Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images:Ants, © Dunja Zubak  via internet   Fair Use

Crows in flight, via internet author unknown    Fair Use

Judas Hand

 

 

 

 

Judas Hand

( a 55)

 

March howls its broken promise

to erase the extra decades in your bones;

 

you're spent in bed still feeling

the burn that made the ash.

 

The ghostwind cuts

your lips with a dead man's kiss.

 

You forget hummingbirds are coming

like children cured by the sea

 

and wish you'd never bet

on that judas hand.

 

 

 

 

March 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for the Word Garden Word List 

at Shay's Word Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes: a poker hand of black aces and eights with a card in the hole is called a dead man's hand, after the hand held by Wild Bill Hickok when he was shot in the back of the head in Deadwood, Dakota Territory 1876. It's also known as the judas hand. Alternatively, a judas hand can be three tens, representing the thirty pieces of silver Judas Iscariot received for betraying Jesus Christ.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Landscape in Stormy Weather 1885 ©Vincent Van Gogh  Public Domain

Display in Deadwood, South Dakota with the dead man's hand (here given as A♠ A♣ 8♠ 8♣ 9♦) Vidor at English Wikipedia.Public Domain

The Moon Nurse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Moon Nurse

 

 

Someone must guard the moon

deep in the Dreamer's long shatter.

Someone must keep clear her pathway

mirror'd on the wavering water.

 

Someone must nurse the moon

when the red plague slips in without trace.

While Time ticks to its last empty hour

let my hands refresh her pale face,

wash it with rosemary's greening,

herb airless void with white smoke

between her and the storm oncoming

where light itself is revoked.

All the nights she's held watch above me

by the bed where sleep loses its way,

the silver songs she's sung me

put a debt on me I must repay.

They say she poisons the fallen

who ravage across the wide earth,

or stare in electrical cages

where madness has gone to give birth

 

 but those 

she brings whole through the hunter's dark

burn tonight her evanescent spark.

November 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Poetics

at dVerse Poet's

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: this poem has been revised a dozen times since posting, and I'm still not happy with it. It didn't rhyme at all at first, and now it rhymes too much. I blame Poe, whom I've been rereading WAY too much lately.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: ©Dmitry Brodetsky  All Rights Reserved   Fair Use

Author and title unknown, via internet      Fair Use 

 

Camellia

Camellia

"...And a breath of lemon filled the vast moment/as the wind became a flower of gauze..."

~from Nocturnes from the Window, by Federico Garcia Lorca

I am behind the wall now

wearing red and a window.

I will be safe

if you see through me

only white sky, the almond tree

and grass.

I wore the mask til blood

stained through

the sting of a flower; it

told too much with its 

sibilant drip. That 

was not safe.

I am a camellia from

snow country, cut

at the stem, dying in aqua vitae,

a fragrance passing citrus

through your room. I will be safe

when the last petals

cover my cast off mask.

May 2020

posted for The Sunday Muse

I have also used several words from Kerry O'Connor's

Skylover Word List For May

Images: A Distant Future, © Raluca Caragea   Fair Use

Yellow Roses in a Vase, 1882, by Gustave Caillebotte, manipulated    Public Domain

The Keeper's Dream

The Keeper's Dream

Wild darkness grows tame lightning

blue light from wrinkled hands;

 St Elmo's fire, stormscream, water

pushed into a weapon,

air's hysterics

my mates in this dark place.  

From the dead sailor's dream I know

your cry, snaking

up the spiral spine of things,

to warn the time is here

when even fishes will need wings.

~December 2019

For Kerry's Art FLASH 55 at real toads

A quick and dirty 55--forgive if my tools are still a bit rusty--with thanks to Kerry for all the glories, past and present, of The Imaginary Garden, and to the G-Man for the form which never fails.

Images: Pharos and Pacifico Oracle cards, © Kerry O'Connor
Attribution Link

Star Bright

Star Bright

A little star

blown on a crinkled wind

comes to the Deadhouse.

It pushes open a window

darts a beam

between cobweb cities

and empty night.

The Dead and the

Apprentice Dead,

mummified

mute, are of course

indifferent but

the ragged prisoner,

the Almost Dead,

lifts her darkened eyes

and suddenly

begins to breathe

 in the swelling rhythm

of the living firmament.

~November 2019

Personal Note: For those who may not have heard yet, my husband passed into the solar wind on October 18th, after months of quietly enduring as much pain and indignity as a human being can suffer. I think of him as released, and of the rest of my life as totally unknowable, but at least the wild dark-eyed muse seems to be back, vague in the shadows, teasing me with her throaty whisper.








Image: Untitled, by Zladislaw Beksinksi

Friday 55 March 30 2018

Another Friday, another 55 words to chronicle the long march, the wild hunt, the dance of the living and dead. We come to remember a man who had more to give than take from the world of blogging, Galen Hayes, and to explore the meme he brought us as the world turns around us in its ceaseless change. There are no rules, no social obligations, except to write 55 words of prose or poetry--no more, no less, and link them in the comments below between Friday and Sunday morning for myself and others to read. Comment moderation is once again on to discourage the trolls, so please be patient.

I dreamed I smelled the sea this week...

Seascape, 3 AM

Landlocked I dream

of the wind that

comes ten-thousand miles

without one human breath,

wind that throws

its sleepless

seasmell in my face,

singing louder than

the giant's roar

of broken time.

 Free as wolves

before the hunter's shot,

alone with the one I've loved

but never had;

my seaweed dreams

blow this life

away.

~March 2018

Optional Instrumental Accompaniment

Image: Seascape, 1879, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir    Public Domain