Vessel

Vessel

When the moon

is winking

like the Grey Sisters’ eye

passed from housetop

to housetop, glassy bright

and wide as a fawn’s,

I feel your touch;

wind in the night

cool on fever’s summer.

Your kisses taste of a rain

that breaks the drought,

your look slips over skin

wet and terra cotta slick

as the clay on the wheel.

Run your potter's hand

across my back,

reshape my days, my nights

with a maker's fingers
then fire me 
where the blaze

burns morning white.

Paint my curving sides with a

bard’s young colors: jet and gold,

blue as the wandering sky,

jade, yellow, crimson

with every flower;

then take me to the well

where thirst is quenched.

September 2011, mildly revised February 2020

re-posted for earthweal's 

Open Link

(Scroll down one for the Friday 55)

The Graeae: old women", "grey ones", "grey sisters", or "grey witches"; alternatively spelled Graiai (Γραῖαι), Graiae, Graii), were three sisters who shared one eye and one tooth among them. They are one of several trios of archaic goddesses in Greek mythology.....~wikipedia






Header Image: Explore #360, ©  slokaa Fair Use

Friday Flash Fiction 55 for February, 2020

Welcome to this month's edition of the Friday 55, where the only rule is to write a poem, piece of prose, prose-poetry, or flash fiction on any subject, in 55 words, no more no less. This is a writer's challenge that begins at midnight on Thursday and is live through 4:00 PM Sunday, CST. No Mr. Linky here, so just copy and paste your link in the comments, and I will be by to read what you have written.

Comment moderation is off but the blog author reserves the right to delete entries or comments at her discretion.

~*~

Here is my own offering:

Pain

Pain

is the coyote

that follows the wolf.

Bones are enough

from another dog's kill.

While the brain locks in shock,

pain eats its fill.

When

the gash has

been made, the organ 

worked loose, then there 

comes the howling hour,

the pull and crunch of coyote's jaws;
pain's tongue-lolling grin
outside death's den-door.

February 2020

Disclaimer: Coyotes are a misunderstood animal, and no animus is meant against them here. They have an important place in the myths and lore of many cultures, as well as the ecosystem, and a right to their lives and habitats. I ask coyote's spirit to excuse the poetic license I have exercised in choosing him for my metaphor.

Image of coyote howling with full moon,  2011, ©hardcoreturkhunter, via internet   Fair Use

Moon Moth

Moon Moth

I made my home

on a broken world

that I found in the space

between breaths,

golden dark as your eyes

long ago 

fireflies, quenched moons

yellow with light in

the river mist.

Time crawled out

on my veins

like an inchworm and hung,

a floating cocoon

spun from brown autumn's dust.

One dream

in a decade kept a blind sun's vigil

on the soft shape within, and

time's opalescent shell

pledged a constancy malleable

to the formless thing

growing her wings.

All this while

I wandered as a wind

in the tree of bound hours, 

up and down, warm

 in your scent of basil and chai

til the years at last

became harder

than miles

til the earth became still

till the flowers sighed,

waiting for time

to fall or fly.

~February 2020

posted for earthweal's challenge

A Clockwork Green 

Brendan asks us to look at time, the natural world, and many other things this week, out of which I chose : "What happened to time? Spin the clockfaces crazily and get a feel for a present both timesick and solastalgic."

Images: Moth Wing ©Amelia Fletcher   Fair Use

The Lonely Cedar, 1907 ©Tivadar Koszta Csontvary   Public Domain

The Last Afternoon

The Last Afternoon

It was a day where even

the rain holds a grudge.

I'm too dry for rain

to do much good; too old

for paper castles

to wall out

the night coming,

the grey wolf walking.

Only love can do that,

on the last afternoon

when I'll

hold her head
heavy with wolf-dreams

on my knees.

February 2020

a 55 for

The Sunday Muse

(and a reminder that the Friday 55 will be next week)

Image: photo-manipulation © Sarolta Ban    Fair Use

Una Fantasía de Barcelona

Una Fantasía de Barcelona

"---Soledad of my sorrows, the horse that runs away

finds the sea at last and is swallowed by the waves.

---Don't remind me of the sea, for the black pain springs

from the land of the olives/under the rustling leaves."

 ~Ballad of the Black Pain, Federico Garcia Lorca

~*~

Barcelona opens herself at dawn

to the wind off the ocean 

so she may bathe in seabirds

as they rise to her through

apricot clouds, as they sway

past umbels of oleander 

from Morocco,

black-red in pale tubs.

In the crimson sun of noon, she rides

a burning bull to the market

peonies flaring his nostrils,

with eyes of yellow wheat; his horns

of sand gore the stone streets
to a delirium of olive trees. Silver bells 

shimmer cries, murdering dusty nothing 

in the corners of the dark church.

Barcelona in the tourmaline night

remembers her gulls, her gannets and

shearwaters, singing sailor's ballads

to the white stucco walls that

crack with the loss of the sun,

songs of the runaway horse

racing blind to the sea cliff, 

where in freedom he drowns,

lyrics of power and terror, of
flying moons and sinking ships,
and the sweet rustle of the one
who settles in the nest.

Barcelona at dawn
opens herself to me on
her bed of shells, solid as sea foam,

womb-warm and fragrant with

her thousand desires; but

my heart is a white petrel flying

far, far over the razor waves, who

never means to land.

February 2020

with thanks to Shay Simmons for the borrowing of her birds

 posted for
earthweal Open Link

Note: This is about a fantasy of Barcelona, as the title suggests (except that oleander does come from Morocco.) I have never been to Barcelona except in this poem. 


For all the earthwealers, in the real world Barcelona, like the rest of the planet's coastal cities, is exposed to the dangers of climate change, and recently underwent severe flooding from Storm Gloria
".. along the east coast of mainland Spain. The worst coastal flooding was reported around the Ebro river delta south of Barcelona, where the storm surge swept up to 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) inland through low-lying rice paddies. In Lloret de Mar and Tossa de Mar, sea foam whipped up by high winds moved inland from the beach, blocking streets. At the Port of Barcelona, waves crashed as high as 7 metres (23 ft) over defenses, flooding coastal properties..."~wikipedia  

Video clips of the foam blocking streets are quite striking.

Images: Green Sky, © Jose Manuel Capuletti, circa 1950-55? Fair Use 

A gull overflies the Mediterranean sea during strong winds in Barcelona, Spain, Monday, Jan. 20, 2020...(AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)