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

 posted for     real toads

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