Blue Briar

Blue Briar

In the time before dawn

in the fog's soft wrap

when the light is pale blue

as a ballerina's shoe,

the hands of my dream

still wet with  mist,

that's always when I see

the things that can't be.

I hide in a  dazzle

of star-white masked, 

in a moon beak, a peacock brow.

I make a shirt from blue briars,

nettles and feathers, slippers

of glass, a coach from a gourd.

The dark's alive as the past,

soft breath in my ear,

thrown over what's real.

Sight can't cut to my world,

only colored skirts slashed

to ribbons of grey

take the gypsy away,

put the changeling back

in sharp insinuating sand;

the  pain when my tail

split into legs 

nearly killed me;

that was nothing to

seeing you with her.

I jumped on the back

of the north wind.

I took off my nettles,

for feathers were warmer,

lighter than briar. I flew

over ice invisible, 

a dazzle of star-white.

For a night-blink I danced

for a sun's rush I laughed

in the sweet smell of fog,

in the last tangled thicket

of yesterday.

~February 2014

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Kerry's Wednesday Challenge: Creative Space

Toad-In-Chief Kerry O'Connor has given us, as she always does, a very absorbing challenge: to write of the space where we create. That might be simple, or it might be complex. Here I have tried to wrap up all the elements that make the 'space' where I write: my sleepless hours staring at the sky, the rural environment in which I live, history, myth and fairytale, and the emotional backdrop that often spurs a poem. Below is an old shot of my actual 'creative space,' my computer room.

Photographs copyright joyannjones 2014

Today, Unboxed

Today, Unboxed

Today I'll put you

in the glove box

and only think about driving.

You will not be the road, the departure point,

the destination, but a secret re-folded
after one look, stowed away,

a map where only need
will find you.

When I get back

I'll open the package of daylilies,

ease you out with the roots.

As I pull the peat-drenched soil

from the bag, fill the black plastic pots

around the breakables, you will be only

the smell of moist earth and life
let out of the box, tamped down.

But when I sit sleepless,

watching the fire where you

are the air between the wood
that makes it burn, or hunch night-baffled

on the back porch, trying to reach

through the feeding clouds

stars I once saw
so clearly


you will be in the next chair.

You, slippery as summer on steel,

with your mudslide words,

your river touch,

unconfined and unmanageable;

it's all yours after all

to box or unbox, to love

or lay down.

 ~January 2014

posted for     dVerse Poets

Poetic: Repeat Performance First Time Through
Karin Gustafson (ManicdDaily)has come up with a Ground Hog's Day prompt for us: to write about.." Repetition–in whatever form form form that may arise.  (And hopefully, there will also be some magic.)"

Top Image:Beatus Mappa Mundi, 1050.  from the Saint-Sever Beatus
Public Domain via wikipedia.com

Footer: Cube On Lawn Chair, by Gerhardt Richter via wikipaintings.org
Image may be protected by copyright.No infringement is intended. Posted under fair use guidelines.

Three Flower Highway

Three Flower Highway

Three flowers I've had

to garden me along:

 first was the white highway

of dream into song.

Red fire was the second

from lightning's first born

struck cold from the flint

that was found in the storm.

Last, gentian blue stem,

  bud dark in the light,

unopened, uncolored

 sweet in the night.

~January 2014

55 words that have nothing to do with snow for      the g-man
(count includes the title)

Image: Blue Gentians, by John Singer Sargent, 1905
Public Domain via wikipaintings.org

Turn Turn Turn

A seeker, a weaver
a student and master
voice of the worker,
never a doubter, forever
a singer. No one had to ask
which side you were on.

~January 2014

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Challenge: Words Count with Mama Zen

The ever terse Mama Zen challenges us to write something suitable for twitter in 140 characters or less; I don't have much interest in twitter these days, but wanted to remember a great man, and no words of mine can ever beat his, so the fewer the better.

 Pete Seeger passed yesterday at the age of 94. Thank you, Pete, for outliving McCarthy's blacklist, for all the great songs that others made famous, for your own light which always shone bright for the working man, and for Everyman.

Image: Pete Seeger at age 88 photographed on 6-16-07 at the Clearwater Festival 2007 by Anthony Pepitone, via wikimedia commons

Shared under a Creative Commons License.

Repost: Mélusine

Mélusine

Once I was a beginner.

I was rain, I was rush,

I was a barbed hook,

my skull a small cage

for a fluttering bat.

Now in my latter days

I'm the zoo unbound,

furred and finned,

fully winged, 

Mélusine and manticore, 

cockatrice,

chimera and koala,

yin yanged as an orca

and just as 

slick.

~May 2013

reposted for     real toads

Open Link Monday

Process notes:  Mélusine  "...is a figure of European legends and folklore, a feminine spirit of fresh waters in sacred springs and rivers. She is usually depicted as a woman who is a serpent or fish from the waist down (much like a mermaid). She is also sometimes illustrated with wings, two tails or both... "  

~per wikipedia, where you can also read some of the legends and  fairy tales cited about her.

Optional Historical Trivia:  I was reminded of Mélusine (though she only appears briefly here) after writing Jehanne, for Fireblossom's Friday Challenge. Jeanne, the Demoiselle of Luxembourg, in whose castle of Beaurevoir Joan of Arc was first held, was one of the few powerful figures who attempted to protect her, and indeed it was not till after her death that Joan was given to the English tribunal. At various times,like other prominent families in the region, the house of Luxembourg claimed descent from Mélusine. In some sense, therefor, Mélusine is still amongst us, as the Demoiselle's great-niece, Jacquetta,"... was the maternal grandmother of Elizabeth of York, Queen and wife of Henry VII. As such, she is an ancestress of all subsequent English and British monarchs, including Elizabeth II, and seven other present-day European monarchs.."~wikipedia

Images: Top:  Das Lüsterweibchen, by Albrecht Durer, 1513

Bottom:Mélusine allaitant ses fils Thierry et Raymonnet. 15th Century

Public Domain

Jehanne

Jehanne

There's an angel in the fire
feathers burning, acrid, ashy black.
Where is the bird-winged host,
her  cloudy birth brothers
the holy triune fatherspiritson
to pull her out?

She keeps her shield

and sword  bright

gold light, her hose fastened tight

in the cell where they say 

the war is over, the king she crowned gone

far away as god. 

The angel in the fire weeps, she reasons,
she argues like a cardinal, while
her dark luminous eyes follow me
as I open windows to let out the stink.

The cross on her standard

won't keep away the crows

but there's no feather anywhere

of  her brother Michael, his deaf-making voice

of cathedral bells, his wings for a tabard

over her soldier's casing.

The horns of the devil
hold up the sky,
pierce the dropping night.
Her sword ignites
like a willow leaf.

Her breastplate with

the hundred dents above the heart

is all that cumbers her.

The salt stained straps cut into

flesh that was the white lily of Lorraine,

yet it will be the last

she lets go for her dress of flame. 

No sign appears, not even rain;
instead she  burns and burns
lost, half-smiling, staring at me
as if there were something I could do.

 ~December 2013, January 2014

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 Fireblossom Friday: Clothes Make The Woman

The inimitable Fireblossom has asked us to write about an article of clothing. To wit:"What I want you to do is to write a poem in which clothes play a significant part...The poem must have some item of clothing as an important component, not just something mentioned in passing." I have also written to her last challenge here, Calling All Angels, which I missed at the time, which asked for a poem about angels.






Process notes: Joan of Arc, (or Jehanne, as she referred to herself) lead a succesful campaign against the English during the Hundred Years War, till she was captured and put on trail by them for heresy. Jehanne cut her hair short and wore the armor and clothing of a male knight of her time,both as symbol and protection against rape. The most prominent "legal" pretext used by the Inquisition to execute her was based on an Old Testament text condemning women who dress in any article of male clothing to death. She was burned at the stake on May 30th, 1431. Jehanne was later exonerated, and canonized as St Joan in 1920





Images: Joan of Arc, by Odillon Redon
St Joan, by John William Waterhouse
Both paintings public domain, via wikipaintings.org