Jane Dougherty's Blog, page 23

Last year’s thing

This is for the dverse prompt. 140 words of prose including the line from Charlotte Mew:

“This year’s a different thing, –
I’ll not think of you.”

Last year’s thing

I always wanted happiness, like everyone else, but how do you measure it? I thought it was something I could hold in my hand, take out and polish, sit on my desk or hang on the wall. I could invite people round to admire it, lend it or invest it, watch it multiply. I didn’t realise that happiness is a ray of sun breaking through clouds, the brief flash of a swallow’s red throat, ephemeral as sunsets.

It was a thing with me, to collect objects that caught my eye, and one year, it was you. For the whole summer until the leaves began to turn I kept you by me, my exotic cat. But this year’s a different thing. I’ll not think of you, last year’s thing. Not how you ended anyway. Even exotic cats only have nine lives.

Toddaid

Last week’s form chosen by Paul Brookes was the Toddaid, another Welsh form. I found a Welsh site (in English translation) for the instructions. This is what I understood. Structure is couplets, L1 10 syllables, L2 9 syllables. Main rhyme, which can be assonance or consonance, is mid L1 end L2, and there’s an echo rhyme end of L1 and mid L2. Like all Welsh forms it should be song-like.

I really enjoyed writing these poems, particularly that slanting rhyme scheme that breaks the lines and binds them together at the same time. Like all poetry forms in translation, we tend to calculate in English syllables which isn’t the same as the original meter, making it hard, I find, to keep to an even rhythm. It was well worth the effort though.

The first poem is my tentative first attempt, expecting it was going to be difficult. The second poem still uses assonance for the rhymes and the third is an attempt at consonance. The final poem is more loosely ‘adapted’, keeping the line structure but mixing assonance and consonance and abandoning the lyrical aspect.

At the end of time

At the end of time and all things, there will
be, through the storm, a thrush still, that sings,

and the song in his throat, earth-fade’s lament
for the stars all spent, the dark sun’s birth.

Land of apples

These waves that rise and falling die, birth foam
to carry us to our home. Gulls cry

in sky, blue and honey-sweet, loud with bees,
as we walk the trees where waters meet.

No hunger here, no fear of night and shades
of sorrow in these glades, full of light

and peace, that grows and growing falls like rain,
all the pain to the great sea flowing.

Kestrel

Across the waking meadow, wing shadow
cuts the frosted blades, sharp as midday

summer sun. Kestrel swoops, keen-eyed, blood-fierce.
In this desert field, no secret’s kept,

nowhere to hide or cower safe from sight,
a final sigh, a life’s doused candle.

Waiting

Standing here, the place that was ours, we said,
the light green then red, waiting for hours,

though I know there’s no point, still kid myself
the crowd on this empty street will part,

a pushing seaward of time, and you’ll stride
back, then, when every stretched lie was true.

Dancing

Inspired by the immense Paolo Conte and the wall-painters of Pompei.

Dancing

Da-di da-da di
dancing
if you look you see the bee the sea you and me
dancing
with a whirl a swirl a boy and girl
dancing
fingers meet tapping feet drum a beat
dancing
colours stream purple cream in a dream
dancing.
in a world of lies be the dazzle-eyes of damselflies
dancing
da-di da-da di
dancing.

Cloud colours

Cloud colours

The course of the clouds describes
the arced belt of foam
racing up the strand
over and over again
a bow of bells
ringing the changes

~east to west day to night~

white floods the blue
air sun-yellowed
pigments refined from light
bright and high as the stars
deep as the burnt earth of Lascaux
and the dark of distant time.

Random word generator

Here are some words. If your Sunday is anything like mine, you won’t be indoors on your computer!

25. (seven lines)

25.

In the sun
pruning unkempt vines
before the sap rises
and drips from the wounds
pearling crystal.

If only that was enough
to conjure spring.

Is anybody listening?

The Oracle leapt off at a rap-ish rhythm and she ranted her state of the world message.

Is anybody listening?

By and by the sky that seemed
so high became a stream that ran
its blue into the red of run-
ning deer and spread across the dead
and bare-baked sands.

I ask a friend to stop the flow
and grow the trees, to leave the grass
to green-grow garden-gold and bright,
but who hears words that call for change
except the birds?

Honey-yellow sun stretched rays
that reached into the shadow-shade
of shallow river beds as dry
as dust stalks dead and dying
in the wailing wind,

while we play in sterile waves,
the basin-bay of plastic death,
slow and sordid pictures mov-
ing fast, ferry us to the brink
of no return,

showering flowers with wealth that has
its price, a scavenging scourge of wind,
winding through the gullies scoured
of all their hidden treasures, where
the poor things hide.

Riding roughshod over lives
and loves, they call them lazy for
their lack of capital, a crime,
born poor without their rich blue blood,
just veins to drain.

Spring coming

Spring coming

Inside
the cold day-blue
is the soft brown flutter
of new birds cloaking bare trees with
heartbeats.

2. (eight lines)

2.

Nights are hard
beneath the soft fur-frost
when free water turns
a carapace to the cold

the price we pay
for days full of sun
the coaxing of seed and bud
the stop-start of spring.

Red rose

Colleen Chesebro’s weekly challenge uses an image of a winter rose for inspiration. If you would like to join in, the details are here. She recently wrote a post detailing the cinquain form, so here are two contrasting cinquains on the rose theme.

Red rose

Showy
she winter-blooms
hoar-frosted candy-crisp
until the sun her upturned face
strokes dead.

Red rose

Wan sun
so wintry pale
that coaxes buds unfurled
their frosted petals touch with care
and love.