Light

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Light

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have learned to live

for very little

to accept what shows however small

however inadequate

to sit with it in friendship

but there is still

 

something else.

There's a light I crave

that shapes mountains and willows,

a radiant mind flaring each morning open

though it paints its gold on all alike:

the long claw of the

 

promising horizon-smile,

the stiffness that

came into your arms

as you held me, the

little dark murderer's bird

who pecks the grains away.

 

It's still that light

sifting bees' wings

across sage to kindle the flowers,

lambent as slanting love itself

in earth's witchwild eyes as she holds

in her unprisoned prism'd heart

 

even us;

 

even our coarse

demanding

insatiable selves

she will teach the one word:

 

enough.

 

 

 

 

 July 2023 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for desperate desires

at desperate poets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Cottonwoods III 1944, ©Georgia O'Keefe, 

The Thief 1996 ©Jamie Wyeth

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Walking Summer

 

 

 

 

Walking Summer

I've been here before

too long ago, too short a time--

encircled by this walking summer, 

where song is never done, where walls

are built from air and touch, where invisible

love strolls in, the unexpected fragrance

of mimosa thrown like gauze across her face,

pollened with invincible yesterdays,

intricate and insubstantial as

the manual labor of a rose.

I know this place

so clean, so far, so obvious--

this moving room where nothing

was ever allowed to stay, yet a

wayward welcome whistles in the

nag of wind that blows my steps this way

to thin path's end, where sun is made

and broken in a day,

a dropped brick like me, once high,

ruined in a cobble of clouds.

These skewered eyes

so still, so heart's-desired when

I stole them from the chimera,

open starry wide at last
to blink up the mist, the mazed

particulate of missing pieces that

mortar so well with tears the

pressed-together whole, and I 

wonder if there soon could be 

a granting of what's needful;

for I only hope to find the lost--

the tilted corners of a child's smile

the absence of regret, the whim

of walking summer that clings

like mimosa gauze to

the shifting faces of my ghosts.

~November 2015

posted for desperate poets

(" finding comfort in the beauty around us, whether it is as vast as the sky or as small as a dew-covered spider-web, on a cornstalk by the back fence in the early morning.")

Photos:  Mimosa, © joyannjones 2014 

Rosa 'Nearly Wild,' © joyannjones 2015

The Long Love

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Long Love

 

 

Love is a function

of distance. So I wrote

when your touch was too near;

but what long love we

have close-held in us,

to live for the work

for the planting, the sprouting;

for the quick fruit, which

only ripens to disappear

 

forsaking the night garden's peace

for what its voyaging shell protects,

wind-used and earth-taken,

passed and used again as

many times as trees have leaves,

as grass has planets of dew

silvering in summer light

reflecting wild deer eyes

untamed to our desire.

 

 

***

 

 

Everything shifts

in this new age.

Spring is removed,

remote as a cluster of stars

blurred on the far frozen wheeze

of solar wind. Language 

is stirred in a kettle of nightshade.

Intent is a comic ghost

in the styrofoam west wing

 

chattering to dust sheets

it believes are its mates,

as the void gambles and

pulls and dances and beckons,

reckons us a foreign dark

that is not our own night garden,

falling hard as dead wishes

if our loving days

should ever be done.

 

 

 November 2022

 

 

 

 

posted for earthweal's

Tending A Difficult Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Saving the Okra Seed, September 2022

and Okra Blooming, July 2022, both ©joyannjones

Mirror Moon

 

 

 

 

 Mirror Moon

 

 

 

There wasn't much left of the moon

when they got done with her.

They walked on her face

turned her rock and dust

blood and bone

to specimens and souvenirs.

Only her bright eye 

stayed open, and her broken lips

still formed the oldest words.

 

She was seen

because she'd learned to

give back light, heat, the radiation

bombarding her, her severed mouth

buzzing at the mad, at poets and priestesses.

Split between fire and ice

shadow and sun, she made a mirror for

silver darkness, perfectly alone

in an array piercing infinite night.

There was not much left of me

when you were through;

a circled eye half blind,

a mumble of separated lips

lost to reason. I found myself

sistered by the moon; she knew me

still despite the shatter

and with her borrowed light

she let me shine.

 

 

 

 

October 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Untitled, author unknown via Sunday Muse Fair Use

Night, 1905 © Mikalojus Konstantinus Ciurlionis Fair Use

Snake Smoke

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snake Smoke

 

 

An eye is a window,

a window an eye.

I can't tell you any more

so don't ask me.

 

A promise is a lie,

a lie is a promise;

curling smoke from my pipe,

a snake climbing air.

 

Chaos the white bride

for a bridegroom of money,

worst man holds the ring.

Priest eats the flower girl.

 

A promise is a lie,

a lie is a promise;

snake smoke from my pipe,

a garotte made of air.

 

A marriage is a funeral, 

a funeral a marriage.

I can't talk now

I'm late for the wedding.

September 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Fireblossom

at The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: Yes, it's a cigar, not a pipe. Poetic license.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Wind From The Sea, © Andrew Wyeth, 1947  Fair Use

Photo of Lakeith Stanfield, author unknown via internet Fair Use

 

 

Dream Trip

 

 

 

 

 Dream Trip

 

 

 

 

 

 After a pipe dream courtship

he married disaster. Six months gone

he woke up to

a quick divorce. He untangled himself

on the road to Vegas, where lies went down

like a cup of strong coffee

fast and black in the tarry night,

lounge tunes bleeding in air 

sharp as snake-eyed desert light, hope

another bad debt to be written off.

The wind's hand shook

like a drunk croupier, fumbling out

aces and eights

before the martinis, sanding the gas tank,

whistling at graves. The car gave out

before he made Tahoe, when

nothing was left but Jack and shit

and Jack left town. Stars sarcastically

 winked when he put his head down

slack on the wheel and slept

dreaming of her, dreaming of then,

dreaming a toffee-striped lizard

and a stand-up owl

laughing their asses off

at punter's luck.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

September 2021

posted for

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Abandoned Car, author unknown, Fair Use

Lizard © Chernee Sutton-Jurutu  Fair Use

Earthbreak

Earthbreak

At earthbreak

thru a cat's eye

the float is remote

the stun is the numb,

not even the cold

or the bitter

too-well-knowns.

Instrument readings

yield no signs of life

just a stutter off the chart

no one kept,

needles palsied,

cables cut.

At starbreak

through a cat's eye

the human unformed

sloshes the suit,

joins its oblivion to

the music of the

spears, dancing

endless nocturne

free never to reappear

in gravity's 

clinging chain.

Was that a bluebird

blurred in a flash of sun

dropping like time

on tomorrow's butterfly,

or only a mote,

flickering at earthbreak

in a gold cut-glass cat's eye?

July 2020

posted for Fireblossom at

The Sunday Muse

Images: Top, author and title unknown, via Sunday Muse  Fair Use
Bluebird, by John Jacob Audobon  (manipulated)  Public Domain

Friday 55 November 3 2017

Another Friday journey begins with 55 steps into/out of the imagination. We gather here each week to remember Galen Hayes, host extraodinaire who knew exactly what TGIF really meant, and to practice our craft together in that spirit of friendship and fun he bequeathed. There are no rules of engagement other than that your contribution of prose or poetry must be built with 55 words, no more no less. Comment moderation is on to repel invaders, and the prompt will remain live from Friday through Sunday, so please link your effort in the comments below (should you accept this mission) and I will be by to check it out.

And here is mine to start us off...

 On The Dryline

The sky's a stone

neither one color
nor the other;

on one side 

July

on the other 

November,

ahead 

throat-pulse warmth,

summer's wheezy death-pant,

behind 

the storm-horses

white-eyeballed in terror, 
 hooves hailing down green winter wheat;

but here

on the dryline

we sip coffee,

wear layers

 and labor

to keep our grip
on the edge.

~November 2017

(I've also used four words in this poem provided by angie for her Get Listed prompt at real toads.)

Images: November First, 1950, by Andrew Wyeth   fair use

Neptune's Horses, 1893, detail, by Walter Crane    public domain