The Silver Song

 

 

 

 

 The Silver Song

(a 55)

I don't remember when

the Black Fear came; it seems

it's always been here, a broken

rotted smell under the floor,

invisible but disruptive

as catching on fire.

Bright-piercing in the night-oak,

a bird too small to see

sings quicksilver notes.

 

Which more unexpected,

that it sings at all,

or that I hearing it

rejoice?

September 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Fireblossom's Desperately Different (the unexpected)

at desperate poets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Untitled (Blurred Figure) ©Zdzisław Beksiński   Fair Use

Blue Tit, ©Karl Martens  Fair Use

 

Bluejay's Wing

 

 

 

 

Bluejay's Wing

 

 

The first time I saw the sea, its reaching miles

of life and emptiness that twinned,

I was a barefoot child who thought

herself a woman, made of light

and incapable of sin.

The sea is high again today

with a thrilling flush of wind.

 

By day I scan the amber sky and feel

its cheapjack promise scratched upon my skin.

By night I scout the evercoming storm

with my bareback diamond eye

and heart of tin.

The sea is loud again today

with a spoken word of wind.

 

I see now how a palette rich with sun

bleaches out as monotone, greyscaled and thin,

its broken colors robbed of breathing light

as bluejays pale away on cloudy days,

their feathers keeping all the blue within.

The sea runs high again today

with a humming requiem of wind.

I'll never see again the dazzled tide; 

my age is given to the prairie wind

but I won't believe I'll never see the sun,

or the mottled azure delicately brushed in

to point and praise a bluejay's cunning wing.

The sea is high again today

with a thrilling flush of wind.

 

 

 

 

March 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for dVerse Poets Poetics:

Opening Sentences

 

 

 

Note: My opening sentence appears in the last two lines of the first and final stanzas, and is from Justine, by Lawrence Durrell, the first book in his Alexandria Quartet, which I count among my top ten early influences in writing. And some may sense here another early influence, Emily Dickinson.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Untitled, ©Zdzislaw Beksinski 

Wing of a Blue Roller, 1512, © Albrecht Durer

Song Of The Weavers

 

Song Of The Weavers

 

 

 

 

The Norns speak all they know

in pleaching and binding, in winding

on the spindle green thread from the Northlights,

white wool from the southern sugarmoon

as it sets in blood-orange dustfall.

 

Their rhythm curls out from

the tangleroot nest under the world tree

where they refresh the well

season to season, age to age, and all that was

and is to be is formed in their throats' call.

 

They have grown each feather

on the black raven's backs 

of thought and memory

and taken the Allfather's eye

for their balladry.

 

A hard hand makes a rock-hard life,

but their cloud-boned fingers can weave

hard lives into blooms made to jump up in sheaves

as velvet as rabbits, full-hearted sweet

as the last peach on the summertree.

 

They fire the wicker man's burn

and rain his ash into the fields

to weep for the rye

they will color again

in May's breath-dancing fly.

 

I only sit under the cooling stars

in the holiness of night with the 

owls' down floating, in the bright foundry of day

with the tongues of grass leaning

into the singing of their wild living cry.

 

 

 

 

March 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for earthweal's

Wild Language

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: The Three Norns, 1911, © Arthur Rackham    Public Domain

Northern Lights Over Iceland, author unknown, via internet  Fair Use

Ghazal Of Saving

Ghazal Of Saving

In my dream I know that I can save

everyone, anything brave.

The heartburst stag, worlds between his horns,

 breathes again inside this spell-sung cave.

The locust green as bottleglass

fallen to a grave of ants still sings--

Fly up all wounded things,

into my hand the nave.

I can save you---I do save;

with this ink dropped sapphire wave

I  save your smile and so bewitch

death's slave and love you living--

Pulled spotless from the bloody ditch,

each cracked bird with bells of glass to ring.

Nothing dies here that can still be loved.

Dreamed joy rings each finger of the witch.

August 2020 

 

posted for

The Sunday Muse

and 

earthweal's

Open Link

Note: This is my attempt at a ghazal: " Traditionally invoking melancholy, love, longing, and metaphysical questions,...[t]he ghazal is composed of a minimum of five couplets—and typically no more than fifteen—that are structurally, thematically, and emotionally autonomous. Each line of the poem must be of the same length, though meter is not imposed in English. The first couplet introduces a scheme, made up of a rhyme followed by a refrain. Subsequent couplets pick up the same scheme in the second line only, repeating the refrain and rhyming the second line with both lines of the first stanza. The final couplet usually includes the poet's signature, referring to the author in the first or third person, and frequently including the poet's own name or a derivation of its meaning." Obviously I have not completely followed these guidelines, especially relating to rhyme, but did include my name in various forms in the final couplet.

Images: Photo © Eugene Kozhevnikov Fair Use

Photo, artist unknown  Fair Use

Vessel

Vessel

When the moon

is winking

like the Grey Sisters’ eye

passed from housetop

to housetop, glassy bright

and wide as a fawn’s,

I feel your touch;

wind in the night

cool on fever’s summer.

Your kisses taste of a rain

that breaks the drought,

your look slips over skin

wet and terra cotta slick

as the clay on the wheel.

Run your potter's hand

across my back,

reshape my days, my nights

with a maker's fingers
then fire me 
where the blaze

burns morning white.

Paint my curving sides with a

bard’s young colors: jet and gold,

blue as the wandering sky,

jade, yellow, crimson

with every flower;

then take me to the well

where thirst is quenched.

September 2011, mildly revised February 2020

re-posted for earthweal's 

Open Link

(Scroll down one for the Friday 55)

The Graeae: old women", "grey ones", "grey sisters", or "grey witches"; alternatively spelled Graiai (Γραῖαι), Graiae, Graii), were three sisters who shared one eye and one tooth among them. They are one of several trios of archaic goddesses in Greek mythology.....~wikipedia






Header Image: Explore #360, ©  slokaa Fair Use

Moonfrost

Moonfrost

There's a place

in butterfly dusk

where moonfrost drifts in sepia crystals, 

where nightbirds' wings fold

so that even flight

cannot beat its way out

of the stillness of giants.

It's the place

where you stand

in the twilight of trees, where the heart 

still stalks the thing

that thinks shadows hide it

but shows in the dark,

bright as a moon that

glows like a cygnet

asleep on a midnight lake.

~March 2018

posted for Kerry's FLASH 

 at real toads

Some mood music...

Image:Crepuscule, 1897, by Heinrich Kuhn

Cave Light

Cave Light

Darkness is safety

when the eye won't shut;

what can be seen

in the dark warm

where pillars of salt

turn ebony and

 the far sound 

of ocean licks

at time's feet?

Without fail

 I see two

you

myself

the 

twisting meet 

of  stalactite 

and 

stalagmite;

the fallen

also raising

a bridge from 

dissolution,

conduit and 

collapse 

columned, fused, 

shadows in the light 

at cave-mouth that sends us

its  own soft arms as we span

the rock room and shelter night.

~June 2015

posted for     real toads

Challenge: Caverns of Thoughts

Corey Rowley (herotomost, at Mexican Radio, and  recently published author of On Hunter's Wash ) takes us spelunking in the caverns of the mind, our quest to report back on what we see. This was a quick and spontaneous write, so thanks, Corey, and all my patient readers for putting up with whatever happens when there is not the usual excruciating editing process.

Images: Cave Dwellings Near Sperlinga Sicily, 1933, by M.C. Escher
Magic Grotto, 1942  by Remedios Varo
Fair use via wikiart.org

Nightvision

Nightvision

May-wind shakes

the apple tree

and birds drop like windfall

fruit, ripened in tints of feather.

The rabbit shakes

restless in his fur

not knowing why he freezes

in the hawk's shadow.

Walking in the foam

of  moonlight

every color is cooled

from a world that prefers hot red; 

for one night, guns are silent.

~May 2015

posted for    real toads

Flash Fiction 55 Plus

This month, Kerry chooses Zen for the plus--not much of a Zen mind or beginners mind in this skull, but I've written anyway.

Image: Nightvision, copyright joyannjones 2014