Sunflower Summer

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Sunflower Summer

Ah Sun-flower! weary of time, Who countest the steps of the Sun:
Seeking after that sweet golden clime Where the travellers journey is done. 

~ William Blake

 

It was a sunflower summer

counting steps to the sun

as the heat ran away

after a bad opening night.

Monarchs and hummingbirds

trimmed the yellow-gold plates,

bright beads of Christmas glass.

Rabbits came to the back door

with tea and grass hats

asking the way to Wonderland

til everything went south

blind as salmon in time's reckless river.

I spoke crackling long distance

to the place where you'd been.

It was noncommittal, polite, quite

willing to take a message, yet

I never heard back,

though every sunflower

turned its gathering face to you

in that unmaking summer

of black rolling thunder

in the East, lightning crawling

in the navy blue clouds

towards

a red greed of fire, tree-torches smoking

 a banshee wind in the West.

The scorch of mankind

opened its heart to the storm

and the storm came inside

 like Jesus in a circus tent.
 

Still,

against autumn's flood

the sunflowers pack light

into rucksacks of seeds

for the traveler's journey

 to come.

 August 2020

posted for 

The Sunday Muse

and earthweal's Open Link,

(for Mondays theme of Storms and Rainbows)

Images: Sunflowers, artist unknown   Fair Use

The March Hare, © John Tenniel circa 1865  Fair Use

Friday Flash 55 for August 2020

Welcome all once again to the Friday 55. Another month of this ghastly year proceeds down the tubes, howling and gibbering, leaving us to endure and express it in our writing. I feel a twinge of embarrassment whenever I refer to having a kickass weekend this year, but I can't help feeling Galen Hayes, the originator of this meme, would not have hesitated, and indeed, would have done his best to see we all had one. 

So, the rules are unchanged. Write a poem, a prose-poem or a piece of flash fiction, using exactly 55 words, no more, no less. Link your URL in the comments, and I will be by to read what you have cooked up out of this month's witches brew. 

The prompt will be active from Thursday at midnight to Sunday at 4:00 PM CST.

 ~*~

Here is my 55:

Song For Summer's End

Catkins, willowskins,

grey geese in the morning

sky light,  V-flight,

feather-spin in the gloaming,

bee-fumble, leaves tumble

in Fall's honey-wind sighing

her kiss-clover slip over,

pollen days flying.

Pepper-dust, finger-rust;

summer's crone's crying

too late at the broken gate

where autumn's fast riding.

Even so nothing goes

that has a song to

hold it close.

August 2020 

 

Images: Bees circa 1900, © Ban Jiaoshi       Fair Use

The Autumn, 1896, © Alphonse Mucha    Fair Use

Ruins

Ruins

"...I have let time pass, which..helps more than reasoning.”

~Queen Elizabeth I

I.

I wake in the night

thinking of ruins;

not the makers

but their leavings: fort,

church, graveyard,

house, each

with no tomorrow of its own, yet

a casket full

of glass for magpies,

scroungers' stones,

writers' plots,

lovers' verses, shadow beds

for weary ghosts

and so must be content

to watch the walls fall down.

 

II.

These rainy ruins

where ravens ride wrinkled sky

where nightfall black-backs silver-mirror moons

however weak you are,

you can stroll forever, 

muscular past for a walking-stick,

hearing a hundred private jokes

the ghosts still tell/will tell

to you or the next one

for nothing's

as constant as a ghost

or more hopeful

than a ruin.

~December 2017

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two old 55's, reposted for 

 earthweal's Open Link

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Image: Carpathian castle ruins, author unknown, via internet. Fair use.

 

 

 

The Wandering Eye

The Wandering Eye

I made you

from a map, a hawk and a flower.

I thought you

clockwork-canny, full of power,

a road-veined eye for

spying the highway hours;

a bird, a map,

a flower meant to be

a fragrance and a passage 

 seeking sea.

But so far away

you flew there could never be

a coming back

despite the lies, despite the slick pretense,

so to see you now

as a morph'd and piddling glance

on a burning

globe of constant transience

is only another

blink of blight and fear.

You tell me this

is the you who's real and clear;

fine words from one

who's broken every mirror. 

August 2020, 

(with fragments from March 2014)

posted for

The Sunday Muse

Images:Still Life with Spherical Mirror, 1934 © M.C. Escher   Fair Use
footer, artist and title unknown,  Fair Use

Haunt's Road

Haunt's Road

You resurrect

on the long road rolling,

with your homeless soul a

prairie schooner full of dull copper

 blood and moonshine, nightmares wild in 

the harness, their snaffled tongues slipping

into dreams with a slow-steeped poison, 

changing sun to eclipse, good to bad, 

alive to dead in a bone-shaking shock,

down along the wheel ruts

 where the wagons 

used to pass.

By 4:00 a.m. 

you're in the house.

The sound of your last rasping

 breaths liquid with suffering still

floating your medicine show, barking

on the mattress-midway the subtle

vibration of your restless shifts,

 a moan and a gasp on the empty

 crater of our bed, hawking

a snake-oil brewed 

for love, or

death.

I put 

your ashes 

out on the hill by

 the dog who loved us

so you may leave

 this haunt's road,

this dead-end.

 Run with 

her 

beloved, 

painless, free,

 green in cloudy  forest,

prairie wind to wrap

you in a place of

 naked stars.

If you 

knew who I am

you'd never
have come.

 August 2020

posted for

The Sunday Muse

*This poem has been edited since publishing

Images via internet, artists unknown     Fair Use