Apple Wine, Bitter Greens

 

 

 

 

 

Apple Wine, Bitter Greens

 

 

 

 

You gave me apple wine and bitter greens

a highwire hawk who'd learned to trick the sky,

a line of lakes where the white moon hid her gleams

in cups of apple wine and bitter greens,

in fantasies, daydreams and guillotines

til we were just a wildfire burning dry

drunk on apple wine and parched of green,

two highwire hawks who thought we'd tricked the sky.

 

 

 

 February 2022

 

 

 

 

 

posted for

 Shay's Word List #13

 

 

and 

 

 

 

dVerse Poets Poetics:

After St. Valentine has left the building

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Evening at Volga, 1888, ©Isaac Levitan    Public Domain

Courting Redtails, 2008 ©Gouldingken     via wikimedia commons     Fair Use

 

Carnival Night

Carnival Night

You come for me

always on carnival night

after the bark of the midway stills.

We're not meant for the light.

Our act is all torches

juggled in shadows fooling

to the foolish, invisible by day.

Day is for hunting

working the marks

big guns and high flyers

after the tigers, the drilling of oil

the milling of coin, the candy-coated crowds

 mice in the grain to be

 poisoned again.

We bring the doves 

we bring the flutter

and sigh of their unexpected

wings, dazzling soft rockets

that burst from our hands,

born for last grace escapes

from an unseen cage.

We are announced

when evening turns dark,

when all that's left of the sun

is a dead tiger in the sand,

and a high-wire hawk

tricking the sky

in a blind noon. 

~April 2017

posted for Kerry's Picture Painting









Optional Musical Accompaniment 

"In history, we've painted pictures grim
the devil knows we may feel that way again
the big wind blows, so the tall grass bends
but as for you, don't push too hard my friend.."

Images: Carnival Evening, 1885, and The Tiger Hunt, 1895, by Henri Rousseau

Public Domain via wikiart.org