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

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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

Armor Spellsong

Hanna, by Kristen Hatgi Sink

Armor Spellsong

Armor of flowers

work of my hands

protect me.

Songs from twig ceilings

silver shy shadows

break me in.

Green love in glass bottles

medicine  blue sky

open over me.

Badlands bitch burnout

acid alkali wanting

come 

fall on the sword.

Armor of flowers

work of my hands

light of my heart

abide.

~January 2014

Kristin Hatgi Sink

55 rose petal helmets for     the g-man

This time, I include the title. (I saw you counting, G.)

Inspired by the photography of Kristin Hatgi Sink, Denver, CO.

Images copyright Kristin Hatgi Sink via Facebook, and Phinest. Her website is linked above, and here is herTumblir site as well.

No copyright infringement is intended. Posted with gratitude under fair use guidelines.

Ghost In The Machine

Man Leaning On A Parapet~Georges Seurat

Ghost In The Machine

 “The best portion of a good man's life: 

his little, nameless unremembered acts of kindness and love.”

~William Wordsworth

When the morning's a veil of grey

and the gold is still a closed fist,

the sighing comes over the fields

spilled in a tickling mist

from a silver pail of silence

before the anxious birds

begin their nervy chorus,

before the softshell world

uncracks itself before us.

That's when you seem to turn,

breath of lilacs panting

just behind my ear,

whispers in an old planting;

all you were and weren't

a music changed to noise,

all your fading fragrance

feeding till it cloys.

So shade, take coffee with me here

where the night and light collide,

and tell me what became of

the man who could be kind. 

~April 2013 , lightly revised, January 2014

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Open Link Monday

This was originally written for a challenge Kerry gave us last April:to take one of three quotes from poet William Wordsworth as our jumping off point. It's a favorite of mine, so I dusted it off for another trip around the block.

Winter Tanka

 Winter Tanka

~*~

From whiskbroom branches

blackbirds drop a watersong

brown rain in their throats

leaf mummies see the moon's face

music-washed night after night.

~*~

Winter's hand strokes wind

across the grain, a dry sea

flat in shades of dust

in time the lost mermaid dies

beached high in the bones of grass.

~*~

Let the smoke go up

pluming on horseheads of clouds

visible for miles;

let the wildfire come starved

to its briar sacrifice.

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Challenge: Why I Write Tanka, Part II

Dr Hisashi Nakamura has generously shared his knowledge and skill with the short Japanese syllabic form known as tanka in this series at The Imaginary Garden. A tanka contains 31 English syllables in a line pattern of 5/7/5/7/7. I find them very difficult to write, but easier than not writing them, perhaps, today. I have used the bare minimum of punctuation, so I beg indulgence for my grammatical liberties.

Process note on the third tanka: Like many areas of the western US, we are having wildfires this winter due to drought, high winds and human stupidity.





Photographs: Oak-Blackbirds-Maple, Prairiewise Seeds copyright joyannjones 2014