Sprite

Sprite

Once 

you were

close to me as flesh to bones

light to day

moon to dream

flies to honey.

Not really you, was it

that amber heart

glittered across my dark,

that voice, that breath

offering perplexing comfort

but just a sprite of you

ungrasped like a child's balloon

sent out to sail to

disappointing freedom--a popped prop,

bright red scraps, then dead-forgot

forever

yet here I stay

bud-eyes to the sky

immutable twisted root

hosting the symbiotic 

froth of fungi, the frozen nymphs,

underground and secretly

altering, 

or

flailing out a tendril, celebrating a twig,

rediscovering my wedding

of  worms, finalized at last

after a long engagement.

Old balloons still may sail 

on paper;

I stay here 

everspent but evergreen.

~April 2018

for Magaly's  Thirteen

the 13 words: 

flesh bones alter amber paper flies frozen breath voice comfort perplex memory rediscover

Image: The eye like a balloon sails to infinity, 1898, Odilon Redon      

Public Domain

The Snare

The Snare

Those notes you play
beneath the stars
as sweet as wine
as red as Mars

keep me hung
and strung on fire,
a golden fuse
burning beads of lyre.

My peacock fan
can't stop the blood
that paints my skin,
the traitor flood

of feelings trapped
as night runs strong
to keep its foot far
from the snare of your song.

What use the art
of lace and gown
when all I am
is so quickly unbound?

Your blinded face
eclipses your lines.
You play for yourself
not for me or mine.
 
How often I've run
from that puppeteer's tune,
till you sing me back
to fish for the moon.

~December 2015

posted for     real toads

a few quick and extemporaneous rhymes for

Fireblossom Friday: The Art of Gerda Wegener

Image:  Das Ständchen (The Serenade) 1918, by Gerda Wegener

No copyright infringement intended. Source

Sevenling (Baba Yaga)

Sevenling (Baba Yaga)

Baba Yaga flies the living woods to pluck

silver tufts of wormwood, cobalt wolf'sbane,

red-cap toadstools for the little ones to suck.

Loneliness and these things made her luck:

resentment clutched and hope that's brought to naught;

and the beebalm, foxgloves, larkspur in her path

can not cure the sickness that she caught.

~April 2015

posted for    real toads

Challenge: Frog-cups in New York City

The lively and darkly enchanting genius of Magaly Guerrero has found a perfect topic for this penultimate day of April's long haul: write a new poem that will include a flower named after an animal or a bird named after a flower. She requested a shorter poem, and I'm sure we can all appreciate that at this point, so I chose the sevenling form, inspired by the work of Russian poet Anna Ahkmatova. I also chose a Russian folktale to go with it.

You can find out more about the Slavic witch Baba Yaga, the mortar and pestle she uses to fly, and her house on chicken legs  HERE. 

Images: Baba Yaga, by Viktor Vasnetsov, 1929  public domain via wikimedia commons

Illustration of Baba Yaga by Ivan Bilibin, 1900, from the fairy tale Vasilisa The Beautiful

Public domain via wikiart.org