The Howl

 

 

 

The Howl

 

 

Deep into the night-abiding trees let free the howl

of my heart(that false doppelgänger, that unreliable narrator.)

Course it there, where darkness shakes down her hair,

fleet where the small hands of rain stroke my cheek

lightly,lightly, not so bitter as kisses, not so salt as tears,

til it comes to a stopping.

 

There's a fire panting to light up the hedgerows,

to make wilder things writhe from shadows bending,

those fetches the old gods make to beguile us dappling the void

the new ones provide, movement alone frantic with silence

save for crackle and spit and the skin drum's thud

that still beats in my wrist.

 

Each day dawns with feet cut off, limping,limping,

in the year-turning dark. Willow-wisps glow

in the grove of dancing,coming to draw the light

from the road, off to the flicker where worlds rub skins, 

to flames and fetches, to what's kindling now

where heartwood was riven, heat banked in

 

each unlit log is given to the season of time burning,

of leaves crumbling and forest dreaming the hand I'm holding, 

dreaming and singing in the sough where rain-wind 

ears the night. Can a child born to houses ever discern it

where all that runs in smoke and mist is changed

and confounded, rounded off without logic

 

to fire that howls in my skull

what it won't let me know;

it's my own fetch that's come

to dance in the hedgerow.

 

 

 

 

October 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for earthweal's

Open Link Weekend #142

 

(and inspired by Brendan's Kindling in the Forest of Light and Shadow

Challenge)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Dancing Dryads, 1879, © Albert Pinkham Ryder  Public Domain

Wolves,(detail)  © Andrew Wyeth   Fair Use

Lightning Tree

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Lightning Tree

When I was a child

pewterblue eyes round

as green walnuts, yellow pigtails

pulled tight in shredded rubber bands

I breathed up a world where I

lived in the storm, thunderheads panting like

mastiffs, tongues lolled over the lake, wind

secret as the monster under the bed

smiling, lightning fairy-dancing

into a forest 

of wild branches;

I didn't blink for the peace of it

covering the screaming, the blows,

cleaning my face

 

of a toy's tears. 

I breathed it in, petrichor

and the smell of power,

a brew of walking cobwebs

that piggy-backed me away,

a broken-eyed Dorothy doll

searching for Oz.

 

When I asked you to

kiss me like rain, you took me

up high on the lightning tree.

You had a web there, gunmetal strong

and sticky with grief. On the 

edge of those sudden wires,

one foot already caught

 

you don't even know you're dead.

When you fight

to run with one eye blind, 

and feel the tremble

coming closer

 

you learn everything

you lost

 

  all

you never had

 

 and that you 

can never trust

a storm.

 

 

 

~July 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for Fireblossom

at The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Note: Comment moderation has been turned on. Apologies for the inconvenience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Images: Lightning in West Texas © Ryan Smith Photography   Fair Use

Broken doll, via Sunday Muse   Fair Use

 

Concerning Grace

Concerning Grace

(Two Sonnets, with an Optional Epilogue)

I.

So here's the one whose time has almost gone
who plays in ashes wishing they were fire

who plays with leaving, wishing to linger on
who never knows a quickening desire  
except to rue that sunset follows dawn,

(sleepless, the dark brings out a red hot wire)

where all night's horses trample Hyperion

where every hope is gutted for a lyre.

Grace would be a welcome thing to save

as a thousand mouths split open at their seams,

all bored but quite unable to stop the screech.

Grace here would be a welcome thing to have,

dividing dark from light in separate dreams---

but grace is grey and dancing out of reach.

II.

All things have a radiance at the start
when life is burning like a star that falls
when passion is a door that swings ajar
to a room that never was a room at all.

But I am a thing whose time is almost done

a seed that shattered back on the recoil

that spent its force in cracking mountain stone 

put down its root in dead indifferent soil

thinking it could color and unfold

like Eos blooms her brother's fiery ball

from horizon to horizon, red to gold,

its petals scented jasmine as they'd fall.

Life yields a withered stalk, but gives me grace

to die and leave some richness in my place.

~July 2015

Process note: In Greek myth, Hyperion is the Titan of light, father of Helios, the sun, Selene, the moon, and Eos, the dawn.

posted for    real toads

Weekend Challenge: Goodness Gracious

Karin Gustafson (ManicdDaily) asks us to say grace, or at least to speak of it, think of it, and perhaps even write a poem about it. I have chosen to do a couple of sonnets, as grace seems a topic suitable to such. (The first is Sicilian, the second, Shakespearean, hopefully.) 

And for STRICTLY OPTIONAL reading for those who prefer free verse, or who are gluttons for punishment, to complete the theme of 'Three Graces,' I include as an Epilogue my egregiously long, semi-free verse, fragmented pre-poem these sonnets came from (*definitely* a draft!) below: 

Epilogue: Broken Notes on Grace

A thing whose time is almost gone

must look for grace to stop its lingering on;

each moment spent within that lingering

groping for the finick'd forgotten fingering

mocks the spark it once knew how to burn

in ashes of what's gone and all in vain,

for that will never give its light again.

       

~*~

Grace eludes in this clamoring dream

where a thousand mouths split open their seams 

bored but unable to stop their screech

as it dances by, out of their reach.

~*~

All things have a beginning

when they are radiant

when for a moment

they are potent

when grace falls open

like a well thumbed book

to the favorite mark

when grace is a door

without a handle

without a hook

that opens to

no room at all.

But I am a thing

whose time is done,

spent seed that once blew

too dry and far, that

spent all its force

to crack the stone

put down its root in poisoned soil

thinking still it might somehow unfold

instead grew spindly, twisted,

finally cold.

Now in the time of withering

I look for grace

to untie each starveling leaf

and let it fall--

some richness for this tight atomic dust

before the coming winter takes it all.

Images: The Three Graces, 16th Century, by Corregio

Public domain via wikimedia commons

Winter Sunflower, copyright 2014 joyannjones