Sabbat

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sabbat

 

 

 

I saw the moon in the devil's eye

when October rode in on her horse of bone.

The night began to weave the sky

dark and darker, cold and high,

in deep black strands from a witch's comb.

The heart of a bird pierced on a knife

hides a ferric flute and a rusted ladle.

Her blue feathers dropping, her downy white,

leave her butterfly bones to the freeze in the night

while the moon shines bright in the devil's cradle.

Nine shadows come and then three more

to swing five times round the balefire's flare.

The wind robs the roof and opens the door,

puts a wet salt skin on the bedroom floor,

slips on a sorrow too old for despair.

Wash him with blood and dry him with silver.

Float him away on a lye-thick river.

Cross his red forehead with your gnostic brand

but the moon still shines from the devil's hand.

 

 

~October 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Word Garden Word List at

Shay's Word Garden 

where she asks us for a bit of rhyme this week

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Walpurgisnacht,© 1923 by Heinrich Kley  Public Domain

Skullshot © joyannjones

 

Wildfire

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wildfire

 

 

 

Time is a wildfire loose in the willows

burning soft-stemmed boughs to hissing smoke.

Their weeping won't save them, or their green hearts,

nor the pleading of oxen, burnt out of their yokes.

It runs its red leg 'cross the suck of the slough

to harvest sheep's breath in its ragged pillows,

to garland the branch with burnt black buds.

Time is a wildfire loose in the willows.

Time races, time flies, time burns the bridges.

It eats church and saloon out of house and hope.

It's tongue licks the moonlight off the moon's mirror

and boils rainy hours to hissing smoke.

Time is a fire, time is a melting

that feeds on the whole and ashes the parts.

Time burns up May-brides into sere widows;

their weeping won't save them, or their green hearts.

And when black-cloud crows show to pick my bones

I'll say come, children come, and don't come slow.

Time's a quick flame, and we are its smoke.

Time was my harness; I'm soon out of its yoke.

April 2022

 

 

 

 posted for Fireblossom 

at The Sunday Muse:

Word Garden Word List #19:A.E.Housman

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: This poem is in the cascade form(with a few liberties,) which I felt fit in with Housman's general style, tho since it has been invented since his time, of course he never used it.

 

 

 

Images; Landscape Of Ruins And Fires, 1914 © Felix Valloton, manipulated   Public Domain

Wheatfield With Crows, 1890. © Vincent Van Gogh  manipulated,     Public Domain