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

Friday 55 February 23 2018

Welcome to this week's meeting of minds and pens, where we remember a man named Galen Hayes for always being human, supportive and most of all, able to make laughter easy. The meme he originated, 55 words of prose or poetry, no more no less, on any subject, in any way, continues here, where we stress the exercise for its own intrinsic value, and not for the visits or comments it may draw, and certainly not as any obligation. So feel free to write without rules or expectations, and as often or as occasionally as you please, and link the result in the comments below. I will be delighted to come read it. The 55, as always, stays live from Friday till Sunday morning.

What I managed to throw together this week...

Mare

Time has made things small

whitened eyes shrink the sky
to fretful glances,

mouthfuls snatched 

in cloudy dips,

the great round room of mind

become a hoarder's 

feckless tip.

Yet night still grows

her waving shadows.

The blue-
winged mare who flew
head-first

across stars' streams

comes down at last

on emerald grass

stilled

with dreams.

~February 2018

tip (2) noun...11. British.  a) dump for refuse, as that from a mine. b) Informal. an untidy place, especially a room ~dictionary.com

 

Images: Study of the Head of a Horse, 1439, by Pisanello      Public Domain

A Red Horse, 1938, ©Marc Chagall      Public Domain

Truce

Truce

Though the war is declared

over, arms surrendered,

the enemy never changed

and never died;

though love lies

listless among a million

curled-back muzzles, her

arsenal stays

undiminished. With each breath

she makes another soldier,

a new destruction. O

I dreamed it was over

the day I stemmed a daisy

down the still hot barrel;

while the whole earth cried peace

the sleek bullets flew

silver in the dark,

silent to the heart

as you, my love,

came in through my bones

knowing their roads,

floating their course, rolling

an ancient river, murmurous,

snuffing on a sigh of night

my sign of fire; still

you sought the lightning-splitten crag

that hid the source, and planted there

your own red banner,

a flying wing, a flag

fluttering round my eyes

full of your smell and color--

the color of war and summer.

~August 2015

Image: Death Flower, via pinterest   author unknown 

Walls

Walls

I'm not good enough at love to understand

this way you have of working undercover,

of fixing and of making things entire

without a self-congratulating mutter;

how all your walls are strong and mine are sand.

The love I understand is more a flyer,

spirit made of air with hollow bones

adept at breaking longer into shorter;

a wind that pulls down trees and tumbles stones

can't see walls or know what they require.

I'm not good enough at love to work with mortar,

make useful shapes from viscous mud and straw.

I only know I'm flightless in your hand,

leaning tired shoulders on the wall

that keeps me safe and caught within its border.

~April 2015

posted for       real toads

Margaret's Play it Again Challenge

I chose the envelope quintet described by Kerry O'Connor 

here.

 Poem 26 for April.

Note: This poem was written this morning, and is offered without normal polishing and editing--apologies, but that's the way the poem goes in April. ;_)

Images: The Watercarrier, 1908, by Eugene de Blaas, Public domain via wikiart.org

Barn wall, copyright 2015 by joyannjones 

The Shell

The Shell

It feels safe

inside the shell,

playing the still unhatched

whose soft pink mouth will

nurse forever at the sweetest root,

the chick who someday will rise
when time and wing lift high

to test the membrane of the sky;

but the shell has been shaped 

to your greatest 

strength, your smallest breath;

can you,

a  blob whose bones

make a brittle wee house

with only one room,

grow large enough

to leave it?

~April 2015

posted for

National Poetry Month with Magaly Guerrero

Anticipating Mayhem

Write a poem that lets us glimpse into how you ready yourself before facing known troubles, and what you do to cope once mayhem has done its thing.

 

 

Poem 25 for April

Images: Cosmic Egg, 1966, by Vandel Naumovski
Fair Use via wikiart.org
The Egg, 1885, by Odilon Redon
Public domain