Jane Dougherty's Blog, page 24

Tree-stone

My response to Paul Brookes’ ekphrastic challenge ‘This day’. You can see the photographic image here

Tree-stone

In the tree slowly turning
to stone a face looks out
man bear dog
with an expression
of great sadness

the sight of this world
slowly turning
from green and growing
to the stone
of closed hearts and motorways
the last light in brown eyes
slowly turning.

24. (seven lines)

24.

No wind stirs dry leaves
no rain
stream barely heard
in the bird-silence

but the tractor rumbles
forcing the earth
to her driest roots.

Burning skies

A poetic response to Paul Brookes’ ‘This day’ photograph. You can see the image on Paul’s blog here.

Burning skies

How many fires in the sky
before the snakes and strings
of cultured gemstone-light
sink into the ocean of dark night?

Moon-sun perhaps
will wash them away

and when daylight rises again
there may still be eyes
wild and wide
to marvel at its pearl-soft purity.

1. (eight lines)

1.

So many quiet deaths
in the night dark
no screams no pleas
no sirens wailing

and in the morning
a smear of blood
a handful of iridescent feathers
someone sleeps replete.

The source of joys and sorrows

For the dverse prompt.

The source of joys and sorrows

Where do I begin?
In the spring of home,
bosom of the family,
a branch of such a special tree,
or with you,
our river running, we,
never stopping, tree spreading?

All are pebbles in the stream,
sea glass on a strand of white sand,
the sun’s gold and silver gleam,
gulls, a wild sky of clouded blue
and you.

Through these years of running rivers,
waves on the strand,
glass glittering in the night,
light and dark, a child’s hand,
laughter in two score rooms,
comfort when the wind blew,
when all is said and done,
it will always be you.

Night walkers

Painting by Niko Pirosmani.

Night walkers

Beauty walks night times,
stalks the dark meadow,
fur, feather and uneasy sleep.
Moonlight blurs the quick shadows,

stalks the dark meadow,
orchid-faced and burrowed,
nested with new hares.

Fur, feather and uneasy sleep
fill the hedges. Leaves in the wind,
hearts flutter, fearful, for

moonlight blurs the quick shadows
of this ungentle night,
where death walks in silent beauty.

After the party

Not sure where this one came from, and I couldn’t decide between these two paintings. For the dverse prompt.

After the party

wild-child wild,
hare dance, deer prance,
we clear up the broken boughs,
mop up flooded streams,
put back fledglings
fallen from the nest.
Owls call the final score,
as we roll back the meadow,
turn off the moon
and take down the stars.

Mathnawi

Paul Brookes’ chosen form last week was the mathnawi. This form of rhyming couplets has a good rhythm, and the internal rhymes give cohesion to the long lines of 10/11 syllables. Traditionally, the mathnawi gave long religious or mystical poems, so I decided to go with nature. The first poem has 11- syllable lines, rhyming couplets with the same internal rhyme. The second poem has 10-syllable lines and the half lines have their own rhyme. It would be interesting to try another one using consonance rather than full rhyme for the half-lines.

Dreams of flight

Heart and mind are one with the wind and no-sun,
rivers that run and run till the world is done,

and beneath this grim grey canopy of day,
we who’d choose the wild way, tread the tame byway.

I’d run with dainty deer and nimble hare, here
where rain and mere make mirrors of pewter drear,

and up above with black crow and turtle dove,
over the foxglove fields we’d fly and find love.

In the woods

In the dark of winter woods, runs the deer.
We watch and hark, red arrow leaping clear

through slanting sun, trees straight as spears. Moss green
boughs in the breeze hide secrets left unseen,

the flight, the set, the nest and hollow tree.
By bramble barbs beset, we leave them be.

Kelpie

Kelpie

Black as night swell,
wild water, mane-flowing,
there is anger in dark places,
horse-hooved,
that tramples water
to white shreds,
tears our unwelcome flesh
with white tiger-teeth.

Impressions

Another cadralor inspired by the random word generator.

Impressions

1.
Numberless, the stars, the grains of sand,
that glitter and shift uncountable
in their dark oceans. We dip our toes
in the vastness, think we have earned
the deeds of property.

2.
There is no rampart
against the slings and arrows,
the shells that burst in messy flowers,
only the flimsy shield of pretence
that we didn’t know.

3.
The deer gives me a quizzical look
and bounds away. A breeze rattles
the hanging leaves, shivers the sunlight
on the broad glossy leaves of cuckoo pint.
I know I am not in my place.

4.
A faint perfume drifts,
the notes of an unidentifiable song,
branches snag morning fog as the day yawns,
cock-crowing and mysterious. Shadows
among the trees, dry twigs snap.

5.
The view from the window, ochre and saffron,
a distant sea-blue beyond the green pines,
I hold my breath above the loud street,
voices, music, bursts of laughter,
afraid it will all blow away in a dream-wind.