Winter Fog

"The mind-is not the heart.
I may yet live, as I know others live,
To wish in vain to let go with the mind-
Of cares, at night, to sleep; but nothing tells me
That I need learn to let go with the heart.”
~Robert Frost

Winter Fog

A Roundel

The fog came slow pretending

very softly it was snow,

all white and never-ending.

The fog came slow.

All the things I didn't know

were lost in undefending

silhouetted frozen glow;

their beacon was a friending,

a breath of blue to blow
scope, light and comprehending.       

Still, fog was never snow.

~March 2014 

posted for    real toads

Challenge: A Birthday In March: Robert Frost

Images: Top: Winter Fog, 1895, by Arkhip Kuindzhi

Public Domain via wikipainting.org

Footer: Snow, 1936, by M.C.Escher

This artwork may be protected by copyright. It is posted on the site in accordance with fair use principles. via wikipaintings.org

The Ignorant Seed

The Ignorant Seed

A Roundel

The seed's not born knowing more than to fly

where it's up-thrown, blue-skied like the linnet.

Where it falls unfeathered and bound to lie    

the seed's not born knowing.

Ignorance, rain and the earth begin it,

the labor to live without knowing why,

to crack and splash out the thing within it

to be the bait for the hummingbird's eye

nectar, fragrance, a color infinite,

then die where it stands without a goodbye;

the seed's not born knowing.

~April 2013




posted for   real toads

Challenge:I Say Roundel, You Say Rondolet
The well-in*formed* Marian Kent challenges us to attack either the roundel or rondolet form to get our April benumbed poetic juices flowing. I did the Roundel, simply because I'm a Swinburne fan and he invented it. I played a bit loose with the meter and stresses here and there, but hey, it's 4:30 in the morning. I blame Algernon.



Here is the free verse fragment I pulled this from, just for fun. I really like the roundel better, I think.



Seed

The seed knows

very little; only to fly with the wind

to land where it's thrown

to push out what's in it,

be if it can

a tall  womb for bees

then die where it stands.

~April 2013

The Fortune Teller

The Fortune Teller

 A roundel in the rough

The cricket knows who’ll take the flag and bleed out in the sand

which one tells as many lies a day as the melon's black seeds

who’ll marry her love at last to find he's a red-eyed Caliban;

The cricket knows.

The cricket‘s dead antennae twitch the word from the yellow weeds.     

I hear his dessicated legs push out the code, a one ghost band.

His deathsong chirps through the lacy curtains, then recedes

bowing of birth and murder, plagues of blindness on the land.

We have no secrets he and I, in the brainbowl where he feeds.

I re-bury him each day, each night he burns me like a brand.

The cricket knows.

October 2011

Posted for   OpenLinkNight   at dVerse Poets Pub 

This is my attempt at a roundel, a form created  by the English poet, 
Algernon Charles Swinburne.  

Rhyme scheme is ABAR BAB ABAR. The refrain (R) consists of the first four syllables of the first line, and may or may not rhyme with the B lines. Each main line should have the same number of syllables, or possibly stresses, but Swinburne appears not to have paid much attention to that aspect in his own work, so I haven’t either

Image: Still Life with Origami Figures, original charcoal drawing,  

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