Bluejay's Wing

 

 

 

 

Bluejay's Wing

 

 

The first time I saw the sea, its reaching miles

of life and emptiness that twinned,

I was a barefoot child who thought

herself a woman, made of light

and incapable of sin.

The sea is high again today

with a thrilling flush of wind.

 

By day I scan the amber sky and feel

its cheapjack promise scratched upon my skin.

By night I scout the evercoming storm

with my bareback diamond eye

and heart of tin.

The sea is loud again today

with a spoken word of wind.

 

I see now how a palette rich with sun

bleaches out as monotone, greyscaled and thin,

its broken colors robbed of breathing light

as bluejays pale away on cloudy days,

their feathers keeping all the blue within.

The sea runs high again today

with a humming requiem of wind.

I'll never see again the dazzled tide; 

my age is given to the prairie wind

but I won't believe I'll never see the sun,

or the mottled azure delicately brushed in

to point and praise a bluejay's cunning wing.

The sea is high again today

with a thrilling flush of wind.

 

 

 

 

March 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for dVerse Poets Poetics:

Opening Sentences

 

 

 

Note: My opening sentence appears in the last two lines of the first and final stanzas, and is from Justine, by Lawrence Durrell, the first book in his Alexandria Quartet, which I count among my top ten early influences in writing. And some may sense here another early influence, Emily Dickinson.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Untitled, ©Zdzislaw Beksinski 

Wing of a Blue Roller, 1512, © Albrecht Durer

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

 

Fragile Things

Fragile Things

 

Green stem,  arrow leaf

ivory flower

November cool above the bite of ginger.

The brightening torch

is born to kiss the shadow,

flight and song to validate the meadow.

The heart-tide drumming

where your brow is hollow

fills the eye with dazzle

with the sudden flare

of bluebirds on

a feint of air.

~July 2017

for Magaly's  fragile,natural,wild

(I'm very fond of poppies, but my wayward and difficult muse chose to sport with a different flower.)

Image: Cup of Silver Ginger, ©Georgia O'Keefe  Fair use.

Cave Light

Cave Light

Darkness is safety

when the eye won't shut;

what can be seen

in the dark warm

where pillars of salt

turn ebony and

 the far sound 

of ocean licks

at time's feet?

Without fail

 I see two

you

myself

the 

twisting meet 

of  stalactite 

and 

stalagmite;

the fallen

also raising

a bridge from 

dissolution,

conduit and 

collapse 

columned, fused, 

shadows in the light 

at cave-mouth that sends us

its  own soft arms as we span

the rock room and shelter night.

~June 2015

posted for     real toads

Challenge: Caverns of Thoughts

Corey Rowley (herotomost, at Mexican Radio, and  recently published author of On Hunter's Wash ) takes us spelunking in the caverns of the mind, our quest to report back on what we see. This was a quick and spontaneous write, so thanks, Corey, and all my patient readers for putting up with whatever happens when there is not the usual excruciating editing process.

Images: Cave Dwellings Near Sperlinga Sicily, 1933, by M.C. Escher
Magic Grotto, 1942  by Remedios Varo
Fair use via wikiart.org

Moment Of Doubt

Moment Of Doubt

“Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.” 

~Joan Didion

 

Blur is what we are/not

what brains breathe

too fast/slow on the pillow where

each eye-catch lingers,
vain cauliflowers
rolled behind what must

distort itself in
change after change.

Lance/lined hips

get stuck to the star lip

 moving pillar by pillar
to stairstep

a dead instant

down

to the atropine dream;

real to/day/yestermorrow, REAL we think/say

as cheeks/lashed wet that fall dustily

open 

are beacons

or only a dimming

of color

to shadow

what blinks us

on/off

one hundred years/tomorrow. 

 ~April 2015

posted  to     real toads

The Poetry in a Quote

where Susie Clevinger (Confessions of a Laundry Goddess) asks us to write to a quote by Joan Didion (I found this one on the internet and it seemed to go well with the modernist theme.)

and

National Poetry Month with Magaly Guerrero

Peoticizing The News...of 1913

Write a poem to a headline from 1913--

Mine(below) all concern the Armory Show, or International Exhibition of  Modern Art of 1913 in New York City, Chicago and Boston, where 'modern art' which we now tend to see as classic, was most controversially introduced by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors. 

I've tried to write in a complimentary sort of style to that time and occasion.

For more details on the Armory Show and the painters and sculptors who exhibited there

 see wikipedia

Top image: The sensation of the Armory Show, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, by Marcel Duchamp. Fair use via wikiart,org

Newspaper images from 1913 concerning the Exhinbition, various sources, afaict, public domain

Sunday Space

Sunday Space

Sunday knows

the space between candle

and  light,

bird and flight;

knows how

(for only a day)

to lose 

the treadmill hours 

marking warpaint on a skull,

the breathing null

exhaling its glue

to which all things fly 

up the smoking week's flue.

Sunday's

closed eyes   

remember  sight, 

remember

there's no space

between wine and cup

wing and flight

once the bird jumps up.

~February 2014, 

revised & rewritten, April 2014

posted for      real toads

Weekend Challenge:Sundays

Kenia Cris(An ExerciseOnExisting) asks us to write on the theme of Sundays. She actually asks for a particular Sunday, but I'm afraid mine is a bit more general. I wrote the skeleton for this poem a few months back, but it had nothing about Sunday in it, and didn't seem to have a point, so thanks, Kenia, for giving this poem a place to go.

Images: Top: Wheatfield With A Lark, 1887, by Vincent Van Gogh
Footer: View of The Hague With The New Church, 1882, byVincent Van Gogh
Public domain via wikipaintings.org