Jane Dougherty's Blog, page 17

A walk in March woods

In the woods along the stream, following the trails left by boar and deer, dogs listen to the smells in the wind, sniff the sounds. Dogs of the bare Spanish hills, where they could see for horizons, watch the encroaching trees warily, the green-furred trunks, listen to the damp crackle of dead wood, fallen leaves.

The stream is low in its bed, steep-sided, deep, where trees throw their branches in chaotic dance, water running, light-voiced, leaping obstacles not carrying all in its path.

This green light calls from a misty time mossy and ancient. Dogs hear but the voice is foreign. Their heads turn to the wood’s edge and the meadow pitted with badger holes, deer scrapes and the tender pressed grass of hare forms.

They turn, look down at that dark edge overhung with bramble and hedged with butcher’s broom and a forest of oak saplings. The woods stare back. Darkly.

Woods

A place, dim-green, moss-damp,
perspectives shift where trunks march,
and the bird calls echo
high in black branch-tangle.

Those who walked here are hid now,
the earth dug for worms and mice,
here a scattering of black feathers,
leaving us with the silence.

Where I would be

A poem for dverse before I fall asleep.

Where I would be

Above a blue sea, glitter-struck
and pine-scented, heat trilling with cicada wings,
thyme and history trod beneath our feet,

or above a green sea, among endless hills
of unreal green and purple at sunset,
always the tang of rain in the wind,

in a city street, cafés, indifference
of passers-by and monuments,
roofs slate-grey as pigeons,

or here, in this stove-ticking, dog-dreaming
silence, windows shuttered against rain
and wind, spring flowers-in-waiting.

Here or there, then as now, the place
is in the heart, the hand, the warmth
of sleeping breath, wherever you are.

Kites

Kites

A spread shadow
winged silence
bird-machine

glides slow
low across
the meadow

and the wind tugs
at distractions paper and glue
tasselled sky-high.

I reach up
to the trailing flutter
rose blue and hawk-red

fingers curling
around a handful
of feathers.

March

March

Light shifts, steel-bright,
pewter-dull, heavy with threat,
searing blue-gold when the sun,

and the grass shivers
in the muttering wind
that steers the clouds.

Fledgling

Well, that was quick! Thanks Merril for such a supple dverse prompt line.

“In space in time I sit thousands of feet above the sea”
From May Sarton, “Meditation in Sunlight”

Fledgling

Days stretch into weeks and months, of feeling lost In space, in time. I sit thousands of feet above the sea in my thoughts, waiting for my wings to fledge, so I can let go, fall or fly. Either will do.

I watch the landscape change as the sun moves across the sky, the cloud-patterns dappling the fields like passing ghost ships. When night falls, the fields are flat, full of silver and night-noises. Leaves shiver. I watch and wait.

Stars open like blossoms, so close I can almost smell their scent, and something, someone whispers, the change is coming.

Through the fabric of my shirt I feel the sprouting, the sharp tender pain of pinions, their hard sheaths breaking into down, fluttering in the night breath of the wind from behind the moon.
Look! I call to your shade, It’s time. I’m coming!

Seascape

Poem inspired by Kerfe’s random words. The painting is by Harry Clarke.

Seascape

Bray Head, dull in the rain,
the waves rising, falling, hypnotic.
Colours not steel, iron-grey
and the green tinge of copper.

But some days, in some lights,
rays of striped sun strike fire
from the green, the magic ignites,
and the earth rolls back to the beginning of time,

when winds blew from the sea
in silence, hawks hung hunting,
and only hills marched along the horizon,
beneath forests I have never seen.

Maths poetry

Paul Brookes’ chosen form last week was maths poetry in its different manifestations. Using a straightforward sequence of 1, 1, 2, 5, 8, 13 etc words or syllables doesn’t appeal to me much, but I had already been impressed with Marian Christie’s poem that merged the ideas behind Fibonacci sequence poetry and the trimeric, in particular the tide-like back and forth of the lines, overstitching, until the words ebb away completely. It gives a purpose to the diminishing (or increasing) length of the lines, an effect you don’t get with forms like the nonet that simply count syllables. I have written quite a few poems using this idea, and find it almost hypnotic.

The hares are running

The hares are running in the meadow again,
boxing for joy, for spring,
among new daffodils,
bending in
the
wind,

boxing for joy, for spring
is stirring blood,
wild and
fur-
fierce.

Among new daffodils,
long ears
sift
sounds,

bending in
harmony
with

the
wind.

The tritina is a form I’ve used before and hadn’t considered it as mathematical in any way, but that probably just reflects my ignorance of maths. The repeated end words, I found, risk creating a rather forced effect, particularly as the last word of one stanza is repeated in the first line of the following one. Also, the use of all three end words in the last line is hard to manage without it sounding like an afterthought or a make-weight. I’m certain it’s possible to write a good poem using this form. It’s a challenge, but that’s what we’re here for.

These winter days

These winter days are never silent
never still with flocks of homing birds
and trees that rustle handfuls of dead leaves.

These winter nights enrobe the rustling leaves
with hoar frost crisp as ice and silent
as the unseen swooping wings of night birds.

I hear them calling in the dark, the birds
that hunt the night fields. Filtered through the leaves,
moonlight streams, silver as the sea and silent,

but no birds stir the leaves in this silent moonlight.

This evening

This evening

This evening, the frogs are singing
beneath a strange sky, indigo and rose,
and the air is balmy.

Sea-rolling to frog shanties and balmy
winds, evening falls to almost night, singing
low, blowing the dark blue scents of rose.

Here there be frog and rose
in indigo gardens, attar and musk, on balmy
nights when the heat is singing,

and the balmy sky bends down, sweet rose-singing.

33. (seven lines)

33.

Canals are straight, the water green,
still, and trees bend their heads
to buttress the rain-heavy air.

We walk in straight lines, the way
the wind blows, and the trees bow,
and the clouds stream,
listening to the thrushes sing.

Poem in Visual Verse

I have a poem in this month’s Visual Verse, and so does Merril. You can see the image that inspired them and read them both here.