Zebras

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Zebras

(A 55)

 

Remember

when we were two

trout climbing Sahara sand,

two flamingos wading snow,

two zebras

grazing rock, stalked

by an avalanche of clocks

worse than any lion.

Remember

our nights stitched from

oak's blood and violins

torn from the big cat's teeth.

Come home again

before the door breaks,

before memory's last meal

is gone.

 

 

January 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for dVerse Poets

Open Link Night

 

 

using words from

Shay's Word List #9

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Sleeping Zebra, 1959 © Carel Willink  Fair Use

Plant Archetecture, 1962 © Remedios Varo

The Night Dancers

 

 

The Night Dancers

 (a 55)

 

The song dreaming night

  is a film over the world

hiding a thousand dancers

painted with

the blood of the moon.

 

They hum

as they spin, but

I never hear them speak.

Dawn's claw-hammer

beats them to dust

 

leaving a flicker

of chamomile and orange,

 ghost breath of a

performance

seen best

 

through

mist-green glass.

 

 

 

 

January 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Blond Nude With Orange,Blue Couch, 1925 © John French Sloan   Fair Use

Glasses, author unknown, via Sunday Muse   Fair Use 

A Talk with Tyto alba

A Talk with Tyto alba

To the garden overwatered

by my tears

the Barn Owl came one night.

He sat on a branch,

swiveling his round-windowed head

to ask me why

I cried.

“Are you lonely

here, in this place

you built yourself? Do the wolves

draw in at evening,

slipping their howls in the papery sigh

of free wind I sail?”

I looked in his eyes

globed as peaches, golden

lamps pulling light

from dark.
I shook my head.

“Then is it the stone

you can't drop, the ugly one

held so hard on your lungs,

heavy with years,

sharp with fear

of  tomorrow?”

I shook my head.

“I don’t cry for what I’ve lost,

for what I am or what will be.

 I cry for what I’ve broken

and what has broken me.”

“But that's all three,”

said the owl
leaving me there

with a shrug of his wing, 

smooth as music on the air,

chasing his soft

personal rustlings

in the grass.

June 2011

An old poem, repurposed for 
The Sunday Muse

Image: Lechuza (Tyto alba) by macha.cl posted on flick'r