Earthbound Fish

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Earthbound Fish

 

 

It wants to fly

it does

or at least swim

but melancholy never made 

a path to waves or sky

any more than 

Escher's tessellations made

a living

school of fish. They only made

wallpaper

or a fish-dance of replicated cells

that might be somehow the

mute components

of a self-eating brain.

 

It needs wings

that want to be brushes,

that will refresh the distempered

canvas from black

to floating clouds.

Feathers are only clouds, after all,

air things clipped and pressed

into Icarus-wax, 

so why not?

But the paint is caked and dry,

feather-breaking,

and the staggered beating

 like an old heart

that stumbles itself into silence.

Meanwhile ten thousand starlings

live in their moving mosaic, 

a matrix of cloud,

a canvas

of pure flight

from earthdark to light;

 

it wants it wants

 so much

to fly.

September 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for

desperate poets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Fish wallpaper by M.C. Escher, courtesy of  Etoffe

Starling murmuration over Scotland, no attribution given. Via internet  Fair Use 

Inflection

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inflection

 

 We drew the breaths 

of butterflies in high June,

beings never still

whose feet are small

as whimpers in our sleep,

light as the gauze of

a first-hour dream

until it falls,

a blood-splashing guillotine.

Butterflies

know nothing of blood

except the blood of flowers and that

is what we sipped, flitting from one to

the next because life must

spread or be stilled;

we never thought we

could ever be stilled

for we had no thoughts,

so new, so insubstantial

and ingenuous were we, certainly

not one that whispered

"Here is the starry inflection of

Love's extinction event," as we deep-

drank our liquor from the meadows

drying beneath us, even as the vapor

of your breath closing to me

dried on my lips

 

in a sigh, tenuous and bright

as wind-floated pollen,

your mouth soon withdrawn

to suckle the next flower's mouth

until flowers and memory and all their savor

 too were gone.

 

August 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Tipped at

desperate poets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Untitled(Landscape With Butterflies) 1956 ©Salvador Dali

Butterflies ©Odilon Redon

 

Quadrille Of The Star

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Star

 

 

I wrote this for you when

you were the star in my heart

to give back light for light

as we traveled time's tempest

bemused. 

 

Who knew then

you were the last;

 last star before the sunrise,

last ghost spun

from the broken wheel

 

 

 

 

 January 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for dVerse Poets:

Quadrille

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Winter Night In The Mountains, © Harold Sohlberg  Fair Use

Paysage Orangeux, artist unknown, via internet    Fair Use

 

The Luna Moth Dress

 

 

 

"...Every Morn and every Night

Some are Born to sweet delight.

Some are Born to sweet delight

Some are Born to endless Night..."

~ Augeries of Innocence, William Blake 

 

 

 

 The Luna Moth Dress

In my apple green dress

with my faceted eyes

black as the breeze

from hell's back door

I flutter around

where the blue shadows play,

where my velvet arms

drop the face of the light

deep in a focus

on one bright flame,

no last sweet sip

of the moonflower's wine.

My cheap insect mask

frightens the child.

Dogs bark as I walk

on the edges of bricks

but in my luna moth dress

soft eyebrows all feathers,

I know I'll soon fly on

the breath floating the sky,

welcome at last

in the green wood of life

one with the Fae, one

with the lark, a thing with 

a place, a peace, a time,

 

a laugh

full of giving past

the slow dance of moon,

free from this exile

in endless Night.

 

 

 

 

September 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Open Link Night

at dVerse Poets 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: Luna moths (Actias luna) live 7-10 days and are nocturnal. Adults have no functional mouthparts and live on energy stored as caterpillars.  

 

Images: Luna-moth © sunelixir   All Rights Reserved   Fair Use

Luna Moth © Jessica Mahan   All Rights Reserved    Fair Use

 

Flash Friday 55 Thanksgiving Edition 2020

 

 

 

 Welcome all, to the Thanksgiving edition of the Friday 55. This year has seen so much turmoil, death, despair and anxiety that pulling anything up from a well of gratitude can be difficult, but there are indeed things to be thankful for, like those we love, the hope for change and renewal we have under a new administration, or like this gathering of writers remembering our history, our craft and an absent friend, the G-Man, who originated this meme and never lost his sense of humor or support for others in his quest for a kickass weekend for all. 

Thank you, Galen.

 

 

 

As always, this isn't a prompt about anything in particular, even gratitude. It's the 55. That is, 55 words of your choice on any subject, in any form, so long as the total comes to 55, no more no less.

Link your result in the comments below and I will be by to see what you have written.

 

Because of the holiday, the prompt will be extended from Thursday at midnight all weekend through Monday at noon.

~*~
Here is my 55:

 

 

 Over The Wind

I threw my leg over

the back of the wind,

or was it the mare

 

who gallops my sleep

your face

bounced in her bag,

 

leaves on her eyes

storms in her tail,

a jagged nightbird

 

with razorglass song,

dragon-winged

by a child's sleeping breath?

 

And I the rider

faded as fable,

lightning passing by.

 

 

 

 November2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Vintage postcard, manipulated  Fair Use

Photograph of Galen Hayes, source unknown  Fair Use

Donnerstag,  artist unknown, via internet  Fair Use

Dragon Awakens,   © Theodore Severin Kittelsen  Fair Use

 

Moon Moth

Moon Moth

I made my home

on a broken world

that I found in the space

between breaths,

golden dark as your eyes

long ago 

fireflies, quenched moons

yellow with light in

the river mist.

Time crawled out

on my veins

like an inchworm and hung,

a floating cocoon

spun from brown autumn's dust.

One dream

in a decade kept a blind sun's vigil

on the soft shape within, and

time's opalescent shell

pledged a constancy malleable

to the formless thing

growing her wings.

All this while

I wandered as a wind

in the tree of bound hours, 

up and down, warm

 in your scent of basil and chai

til the years at last

became harder

than miles

til the earth became still

till the flowers sighed,

waiting for time

to fall or fly.

~February 2020

posted for earthweal's challenge

A Clockwork Green 

Brendan asks us to look at time, the natural world, and many other things this week, out of which I chose : "What happened to time? Spin the clockfaces crazily and get a feel for a present both timesick and solastalgic."

Images: Moth Wing ©Amelia Fletcher   Fair Use

The Lonely Cedar, 1907 ©Tivadar Koszta Csontvary   Public Domain

Time The Wind The Fire

Time The Wind The Fire

All night I was

the great heart of the wind

that beat its fever-pulse against the walls.

I was the white rabbit-cloud that streaked

across clipped-lawn stars

nose-twitched over endless indigo

for the wet green of missing spring

til I was taken from the air

betrothed to a wasting fire

burning page after wind-turned page

of my book of flesh unread

...the sound of a child's blocks tumbling

smoking in my throat     bare

wild summer feet pounding down a

hollyhock hedged alley

pink and rose dancers            far above my head

flamenco'd to the sinister

July castanets of bumblebees...

So all the night

of burn, blow and running,

all the fever,

became me

the hedge-wife of time

the wind

the fire,

destroyers 

of the pages

of this crack-skinned volume

all its words

all its summers

all its secrets,

all but the waiting

blankness of

this

last

folded leaf.

~April 2018

for Brendan's Transformations

 Images: Landscape of Ruins and Fire, 1914, Felix Valloton

Untitled image by unknown author,, via internet

In Time Of Eclipse

In Time Of Eclipse

Down among the dead things

her candled light is dragged

but not blown out;

fire that serves 

burns longer 

kinder

than the eclipse's flare that puts out sight.

She's with the tilting stars, flying,

and our loss, and our gain;

a bird with purple down

flying, flying,

 turning the eye from 

this brief blacking of the sun

that belts the world.

for Heather Heyer

~August 2017

Heather Heyer was murdered in an act of domestic terrorism in Charlottesville, Va. on August 12, 2017. Her favorite color was purple. 

Much of the middle United States will experience a rare total solar eclipse on Monday, August 21.

Images: Heather in a glass heart, via pinterest