Jane Dougherty's Blog, page 25

Random word generator

I can’t say this word selection inspires me particularly at first glance, but this is what I was given. Maybe there are some gems in there.

Deer in the woods

Deer in the woods

In the woods we start a deer
that leaps through shafts of sun
away across the stream,

through slanting shafts,
tree-trunk barred and cross-hatched light,
a wild way, russet red
and greening field behind.

We stand in silence,
watch the tree-filtered world,
for ever on the far side of the stream.

Time

I stuck close to the words the Oracle chose and let her give me this cadralor.

Time

1.
It’s a red day, baying for want of love,
never been held to the breast of the moon,
seen symphonies playing in still water,
or opened arms to a child trudging home.

2.
Time soars with the grace of falcon stoop;
flies, flees like wind and the taste of honey.
The skin of the water heaves over dead men below,
their time over—time for women’s grief.

3.
Did those feet ever walk these woods,
where light falls so soft through leaf-filter?
Only boots now tread, crush, searching for blood
and pleasure in its spilling. Compassion hides its face.

4.
Life begins tiny as dust motes,
raw as east wind keening, strong as a baby’s fist,
clutching a first straw and the memory
of a dream, those trailing clouds of glory.

5.
Sleep through the darkness
filled with the music of the moon,
wake to the sun raining rose water,
lighting your last unhappy shadows.

This morning

This morning

Sun spills across the frost warm as butter, and the day wakes. Birds sing tentative spring songs, and I can hear the water rushing in the stream, the rattle of the oaks’ dried leaves that will cling until the last breath of winter. I open a window and let in the keen new air. A cock crows, then another and another. Dogs bark. The air shivers, shrugging off the sounds, casting only cold stillness into the room. But the stillness is just a pause, a step poised to land on unknown territory. The foot completes its movement, the silence shivers again and fills with the humming of bees.

Almost spring
blossom forms
from secret saps and scents
within the cauldron
of nut-bright buds.

In the corner of my eye
a rich red swirls
gold and green-edged

Brigid passes
in chaffinch chirrup
the smell of green growing
lingers.

23. (seven lines)

Though the nights are cold, and we wake to frosty meadows, the temperature shoots from frozen to warm with the first touch of the sun. Suddenly, the small birds have reappeared, and everything is in leaf.

23.

Call of the sun
with the leap of the light,
drawing leaf from buds,
sap from roots,
dogs from chairs.

Wren calls, Nesting time!
and all the world listens.

22. (seven lines)

22.

Pool, mirror-still,
full of sky, fringed
with defensive ramparts
of sedge spears.

Leaves rustle underfoot,
whisper, hush
the green is coming.

Foretaste of spring

Imbolc has turned the weather round, chased clouds and cold, and the woods around the mere are full of silvery light.

No hunting in these woods and the ground is covered in tracks and prints, of boar, badger, deer, fox and pheasant, their leavings and bones. Interesting smells distract the dogs, and walking is more like excavating. Bix is unnerved by the ‘things’ he can’t see and hangs back. Redmond just wants to get into the water. Difficult.

Still water reflects a clear sky.

The vegetation ahead is too dense for us to walk the length of the mere, and the woods along the stream are full of fallen trees and bramble traps.

Bix sees monsters everywhere

At home, the honeysuckle bush is drawing the bees, and lizards are dropping off the house walls, as if they’re not used to being out in the sun again.

February painted in Brigid’s colours

Such a little thing,
a day that opens
like the scented mouth
of honeysuckle blossom,

of light that spills
into scrapes and hollows,
hoof and paw prints,

glints on the metallic ribbons
of orchid leaves,
rising like dragons’ teeth,

writing on whispering paper
leaves, the deed of ownership
of this scrap of earth.

She has them all in her keeping

Today is World Galgo Day, held every year on Brigid’s Day. It doesn’t surprise me that she would want to be part of this international outcry at our inhumanity to these beautiful creatures.

She has them all in her keeping

Last night Brigid trod the dark,
the grass wet with greening spring
and bent to smell the blossom
of the honeysuckle bush.

She bent to touch the narrow heads,
the long and silky ears, looked
into brown and trusting eyes
of the gazehounds at her side,

sons and daughters of the wind,
sight and scent, sound and vision,
and said, stay close, walk in my steps,
and I will smooth the hurt away,

for the world’s an ugly place,
unfit for your slender grace.

Resolutions

For the dverse prompt.

Resolutions

I don’t make resolutions
to swear less or be kinder
to people I don’t like,
I plot revolutions.

If I had a tumbril,
I would donate it
to a good cause.

If I could knit,
I would.

I would be sea-green
and incorruptible,
walk arm in arm
with Louise Michel
and Connie Markievicz,

wind roses through the barricades,
singing loud and out of key,

but I don’t make resolutions.

Mid-winter

Mid-winter

In the bleak mid-winter
nothing is red but the robin’s breast
the sun setting

white the bladed grass rimed with frost
heron-grey the heavy sky
and black the bare boughs.

Winter is a fist
an empty gauntlet
clenched around a dead bird

it has no heart that beats red as robins
and the fiery sun setting
is cold as a stony field.