Jane Dougherty's Blog, page 15

Haibun because

This morning, I am drawn back to writing that book I said I never would. Reluctantly, I chip away at it like a cack-handed sculptor with clumsy tools, attacking a lump of ancient stone, torn from its roots, embroidered with lichens and microscopic flowers. Why? The stone is already beautiful, the story sufficient in my head, without the toil of carving pages full of words. Perhaps because I am me, like it or not, and no amount of surgery will make me a person who does not make stories in her head and write them down.

Spring comes because
the earth turns even though
the clouds are dry.

Fish at the pool

For the dverse prompt. A Fibonacci sequence poem.

Fish at the pool

The leaves are uncurling clenched green fingers, blossom
sheds warm white flakes snow-
quilting the pool,
where green
fish
swim,

deep in dark, limpid water, slow and heavy,
ancient as yesterday. Sun casts
light-shadows, dimpling
where insects
dip,
skim,

swallows swallowed in fish-maws rising to sky’s
depths. Blue or bough-black?
fish-eye lensed,
the sun
ripples,
aqueous.

Sun or moonlight

Sun or moonlight

Come the day, the hour, sun or moon,
fill your hands with light,
take no chances
with time.

Fill your hands with light
to show the
way home,

take no chances,
night falls
early

with time
to
kill.

No moon

No moon

No moon tonight, no stars,
no bright sunset lingering,
no bird-flight fluttering,
among the darkling trees.

I hear a lone deer barking
where the woods are deepest,
where hare young crouch in sleep,
in the long spring days.

In the house the dogs are restless,
not mouse or cat the prowler,
no neighbour’s dog the howler
on the sable hill.

The night is full of secrets,
the light too dull to show them,
but we know their muffled tread,
and we bar the shutters tight.

Moons and swansong

This apocalyptic poem was inspired by Kerfe’s Oracle 2 random words.

Moons and swansong

In tenebrous nebulae, sheet-lightning-lit,
the walls are going up brick by brick
around the man-made wound in the fabric,

and moons are raining like hailstones,
their swansongs ringing to the edge
of the universe and back.

Nothing impedes their course as stars implode,
and the melody of extinction spirals
in galaxies and snail shells, flawless and infinite.

Singing the songs of the earth and space
and time, moon-music streams in silver trails,

and I hope I will see through the dark
when the final firework-burst explodes,
when the sable sky of space reels in
our ravaged earth, rotten to the core.

I hope to catch a final spark,
hold in my hand a fragment
of the immensity we have lost.

Inheritance

For dverse.

Inheritance

My father’s house, my father’s eyes,
would have passed from father to son,
but he had daughters,
and he gave us all his wealth.

I got his eyes, and I have them still.

No child of mine has that hazel-blue,
the brown-grey, the heron hackle-cormorant sheen,
winter mountain-brown beneath a fitful sun,
a blue sky and grey sea heaving.

I look away beneath the stones,
beyond the gorse flowers blooming,
over waves, the basalt cliffs,
and I see his hazel dreams rolling
wild as horses, up the narrow strand.

Bird mornings

Bird mornings

This is spring
this green blue and gold
dandelion-speedwell-daisy-white
the scudding clouds
in the windy wind
and the great yellow sun
that warms the blood.

These are bird mornings
green blue and gold
filled with finch-flutes
thrush clarinets
and the shrieking and drumming
of woodpecker bands
intent on stealing the show.

Spring evening

A quadrille for dverse.

Spring evening

Standing by the pool
among the trees
the day unspools
as evening breeze
unreels about the sedge
stirs the water’s
rippling edge
a shift of light
the shadow of a wing
the sun so bright
a bird about to sing

and then the night.

Huitain

The huitain was Paul Brookes’ chosen form last week. It requires a lot of rhymes in a short space, ababbcbc and no repeats. As a standalone stanza, it has to be all there in the eight lines. Though it hasn’t been my favourite, I’ve enjoyed this square 8×8 form (eight lines of eight syllables), and getting it to make sense. I think of this aspect as a form of maths too.

Morning

This morning so blue, limpid air
crow-calling, ah-ah to the light,
a golden flood with wealth to spare,
fills up dull ditches, running bright
as galaxies that mesh the night,
while constellations, stately slow,
step toe to fiery toe, ignite
dawn-strewn dew-gems in afterglow.

Hawk hill

High upon this green hill, hawk-hung,
as mists dissolve and change their state,
fall in dew then rise feather-strung,
to hover in mid-air, I wait,
breathless, as searching eyes locate
some small furred thing, warm heart beating,
watch eternal death in the bate
of unfurled wings, life bleed, fleeting.

A dream of if

A dream of if

Fountains play in cool courtyards,
the call of exotic birds,
sand caught in the folds of bright cloth
hangings, blowing in hot winds,

a horse galloping,
hooves raising yellow dust,
red leather bridle, silver bells,

and I ‘d drink the desert dry,
all the shimmering waters of Arabia,
if it would wash the past clean.