River Mountain

River Mountain

Earth and the river

love in secret, miles down.

Their kiss is so forbidden
it lasts ten thousand centuries.

Earth bends in a ripple, muscles sheeted in jade,
river sighs with the leaf-breath of wind
in the vines. Sweat from earth's flanks

drips pearls in the sand. The river

brings ferns, blue feathers, flying foxes, 

and their child is a jungle

under ceilings of light.

Here death's sharply riven

by the futility of entropy, baffled from
fallow by the great golden eye, with

emerald bedding for love in abandon

where the snake of brown river

should hiss obliviously only to herself.

All this should be

the boiled-sterile kettle of darkness,

collision of forces, rock shield and wet spear,

not murmuring of lovers, junction of bodies;

or is light only the blink 

of the godmother's eyelash

a toy beam abseiling, a flaneur-dilettante 

obsessed with the lavish equipment

of flowers, possessed by a

whim to embellish  

what it will never own?

~January 2014

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Challenge: Out of Standard:Reverse Globetrotting

The creatively convoluted mind of Isadora Gruye once again confronts us with the paradox of a paradigm, and asks us to "Write a poem which features an exotic setting where you have never been and (here’s the twist) where you would never want to go." I chose the incredible and other-wordly Sơn Đoòng Caves in Viet Nam--as I have only the greatest abhorrence for depths of any kind and would never allow myself to be dragged into this magical place without use of deadly force.

Process Notes. Sơn Đoòng translates roughly as River Mountain, or Mountain River, take your pick. Abseil is a caving term meaning to descend by rope. Flaneur is  a French term for an idler, or purposeless stroller, and of course, a dilettante is a very similar type, one who picks up and drops amusements, doing nothing seriously. The  eyelash of the 'godmother' refers to a worship in Viet Nam of various mother goddesses, known as Đạo Mẫu.

Images sourced here.    No copyright infringement is intended.

Rain In The Night, Revisited

Rain In The Night

I hear it raining, raining tonight

or is it the singing of water

that everything empty be filled,

effulgent, if only with tears?

High up comes the shadowy spinner

to wind up the wandering flood,

to weave away yesterday's orphans;

I hear it raining, raining tonight.

A storm sent to midwife disaster

turns the howl of the wind in its womb,

brings wildfire and blood to the birthing

or is it the singing of water

dropping in petticoats of ash

dappling the mirror faced border?

The lightning-struck bodies on fire

let everything empty be filled

thinking that which is broken and battered

can be smoothed into glimmering bits

shining rounded and faithfully polished,

if only by infinite tears.

~February 2013

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Open Link Monday

This cascade poem was one I originally wrote for my chained-rhyme challenge last year at the Imaginary Garden. It was thrumming in my head this morning, I have no idea why, so I am re-sharing it, just to get out of a winter frame of mind.

Photos shared courtesy of Flick'r Creative Commons
Mouse-over for attribution, or click picture to go to the photographer's page.

She

Blue Eye~ White Dragon

She

She was under the leaf

the first time I looked,

ruby hair rippled marmalade,
face freckled with dragon dust

a dry splash that falls only

from far flying wings 

of the seeking, the speaking

amaranthine white dragons;

so I knew she was only as

real as I seemed, 

crossing from dawn,

not from here at all.

She came dancing the next time

over the moon, thru the curve double-

beaked like Pharoah's bent barque

on a sapient sea, chasing the sunmelt

thrown west to east

living forever, the breath of an indigo

backwards night spell, caped in

forgotten, slanting star-shadows

cast by the pale, pellucid white dragons.

She lived in the mirror
the last time I saw her, cloudy
behind me, her eyes like the light
that shines on Rán's Road.

Limpid as reeds' long sigh of the river,

she sang the night over in the

key of white dragons, the far flying song 

of journey unwinding, 

dazzling, 

disappearing

all

yet to come.

~January 2014.

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Weekend Mini-Challenge: Three Birthdays in January

Kerry O'Connor celebrates the January birthdays of J.R.R.Tolkein, A.A. Milne, and Lewis Carrol with the theme 'Fantasy.' For full details, see link above. Apologies for once again leaving the Mini out of Mini-Challenge.

Process notes: Rán's Road refers to the Norse sea goddess Rán, and to a passage in the Prose Edda concerning the way the moon shines on the ocean so as to make a reflective path, so that it appears to be a road to the moon. (I have written about Rán's Road here, with relevant passages quoted.)

 Top Image: Blue Eye-White Dragon by Chavanun on photobucket

Bottom Image: Wall relief in court, temple of Edfu, Egypt, via wikimedia commons

Thucydides And The Dandelion

Thucydides and the Dandelion

I had a brown sparrow

who thought she was an owl

and a raccoon who thought  he was

Thucydides. His treatise,

The North American Refuse Wars,

(593 pages, illustrated by paw)

has become a cult classic.

I had a dandelion

who thought she was a rose.

She died because

she had fluff instead of thorns.

~January 2014

55 pieces of blowing fluff for     the g-man

with

A nod to Mama Zen, who works the phones  for Socrates.

Bust of Thucydides, Public Domain via wikimedia commons

Dandelions, by Jean-Francois Millet, 1867, Public Domain via wikipaintings.org

The Runner

The Runner

In turquoise white wind

I watch you run the track,

overclocked, eyes 

of lapis stone made slits

as your carborundum soul made sluts

of us all, cheated by a millennial

shortage of virgins.

I watch you run

harder than you ever cared;

not the grey waste of bone and fog,

the corpse man of now, but the boy

who loved his dog and me

till the wolf stepped out to

stare us both away.

Run on in your baby-fine skin

your snow-eyes squint-smiling,

softshell spirits busy at rip and heave

behind your shipwreck face,

knowing the race is a joke

the finish a scripted dissolve,

winning endlessly temporary.

I watch

until you fade

in  hungry dust.

The particled cloud

settles black

as a  fall of scorpions.

           Best to never  have

to run like that 

                                                                       again.

~January 2014

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Kerry's Wednesday Challenge: Resolutions

Kerry O"Connor of Skylover gives us the nudge:"The challenge is entirely open to personal interpretation of the theme:"Resolutions" and the poem you write for this challenge may be reflective, narrative, analytical or abstract."

Top Image: Wolf Dog, 1976, by Jamie Wyeth

May be protected by copyright. Posted under fair use guidelines via wikipaintings.org

Footer Image: running man, by Max Froumentin, on flick'r

Shared under a Creative Commons License