Quadrille Of The Star

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Star

 

 

I wrote this for you when

you were the star in my heart

to give back light for light

as we traveled time's tempest

bemused. 

 

Who knew then

you were the last;

 last star before the sunrise,

last ghost spun

from the broken wheel

 

 

 

 

 January 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for dVerse Poets:

Quadrille

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Winter Night In The Mountains, © Harold Sohlberg  Fair Use

Paysage Orangeux, artist unknown, via internet    Fair Use

 

October Light

 

 

 

 

 

 

October Light

 

 

 Many things 

are called lilies

which are not, yet these are,

still lilies

by October light

 

these graceless stalks

brown shriveled sticks

reaching dead hands

for the gone

 summer sky.

 

Time has burned them

the dry wheat's color,

taken their sundance of petals

scarlet and gold

yellow as morning,

 

even the memory of

that feasting scent

that 

drunked the bees.

Still lilies grow  

 

for October 

is the cup earth has made

 for midsummer's wine.

Seeds and stem

bulb and root, burnt or bright,

still lilies, alive by October light,

out of sight, and it's best you know

for pulling hands

always

kill what they sow.

October 2021

 

 

 

 

posted for Sherry Blue Sky's

Collateral Beauty at earthweal

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: While it may look "messy," leaving the ground undisturbed in fall and the dead stalks of lilies and other flowering plants in the garden during winter is important in providing habitat for beneficial insects and certain pollinators like miner bees,which overwinter in the stems. See  Fine Gardening's Provide A Winter Home For Beneficial Insects  and Nesting and Overwintering Habitat for Pollinators: "While flowering plants provide pollinators with food, insects also require suitable shelter for nesting and overwintering. Most bees and wasps create small nests beneath the soil or within dead plant stems or cavities in wood."

 

 

 

Photos ©joyannjones,  2021

 

In The Tank

 

(SCROLL DOWN FOR THE 55)

 

 

 

 

 

In The Tank

 

 

 

In the tank, watching

the last foam ascend,

no rockets from

this wet womb, nothing

left but the sinking

still

the spirit seed

warm-curled in rainsilk, is

a spark self-shielded,

a voice unheeded

untrained but turning, a

desire piercing

paper-dead husk

with green.

The birth cord was tangled,

the roots softly angled,

a woven squared circle

of sticky heartweb.

There in that secret

float of penumbra

I felt you move.

I felt myself

blowing, unwrapped and golden,

in the tears of the sun.

 

 November 2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Artist and title unknown, manipulated,  via internet, Fair Use

Seedling  ©2017, joyannjones

 

 

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

Spirit Apocolypse

Spirit Apocalypse

Entropy dreams of its Creator

under the burning blanket

of wild horses slaughtered

of eucalyptus torches slow

roasting marsupials,

of its enemies hogtied helpless

if not as yet quite mastered,

all things of beauty bent

to the wheel of avarice

as the spotted pony runs

as the devil drowns

in sympathy

in sycophants

in syncopated strategies

of the smallest minds now

suddenly somehow successful.

We wait for the tide

to rise, the Earth to speak, 

for the wild appaloosa 

with our handprint

on its flank to find us, 

for the ash

to heave up the white buffalo,

the soul we weep for

to race oblivion

of wave and fire, drought and famine

to bear us

where we may buck and strain

to cut the cords that

crack the bone

of this ravaged

rock on fire

calling to the spirits

for the spotted pony

the white buffalo

the avenging angel

as if we know them,

with only the death's head grin

of the four bleached horsemen in sight.

~November, 2019

Images: War Pony II, by Sarah Lyn Richards. All Rights Reserved to Artist
White Buffalo, by Cuzco. All Rights Reserved to Artist