Jane Dougherty's Blog, page 37

Re-mundaning the wild day 8

Today’s daft WP question is ‘Do you ever see wild animals?’ I’m imagining a Philomena Cunk voice. If you don’t know her incisive style of interviewing have a look at this. But put your coffee cup down first.

And this is today’s poem for day 8 of Paul Brookes’ December challenge.

Before squirrel-sleep

Winter creeps through tree boughs,
with wind-fingers plucks loosened leaves,
tosses them in irrelevant showers.

Gold rains, turning,
giving up the ghost, settling
in layers upon oak mast.

It needs a squirrel
to order the mess,
to brush away the curling debris,

to spiral along the boughs,
panache swirling russet-red,
in a frenzy of cleaning.

Winter is never spick and span,
until the frost grips in a frozen frame
and squirrel-sleep,

and beneath the guardian trees,
acorns, nested in leaf mould,
dream their small dreams of greatness.

Haibun December morning

Morning rises into the dark in pigeon-pinks and greys suddenly glowing among the orange trees bright as Christmas. I smell cinnamon and brown cane sugar. Nutmeg. Jays chatter in the silence though no birds sing. No wind stirs branches, my hair as I open the shutters.

Hush of closed oysters
where unseen pearls glisten
in oceans of sky

First geese pass heading west. I trust them to know best. Deer among the willows.

Autumn races
red and running deer and fox
leaf-billows.

The mouse trap hops and another field mouse dies instantly. There is an invasion this year. Summer was too long, too hot, autumn too mild, and the foxes not enough.

Lives brief
as a whispering tide
soon ebbed away.

The air in the kitchen is still tepid from last night’s stove. Ash still hot. But the sky covers, ash-clouded after the volcanic dawn and the meadows and copses greening in the light swarm with men in orange, hunting wild pigs. The storm breaks.

Unquiet graves
uneasy peace the world shifts
leaves in the wind.

Re-mundaning the wild day 7

For Paul Brookes’ December challenge. You can see the prompt here.

Meadow-laundering

There’s a churning of the seasons in a meadow,
not a pasture, champed and cropped
and clumped tussocky mud by clomping hooves.

Not a pasture with the one or two types
of grass that the munchers prefer,
dull as ditch water, a refectory,
but a meadow,

a quilt that spreads and gleams,
bee- and bird-full,
where cats and martens stalk,
the hare hides her young, and deer
lie in lazy dreams on balmy moonlit nights.

A meadow, cloth-of-green quilt,
coloured and stitched with gold
and blue and every shade of pink,
white frothed and dotted, a sea,
gently foaming.

And high summer, its work done,
flowers faded and seed set,
the mower lays it all to rest,
bundled and rolled up neat and tight,

the brown and the spent,
and the earth stretches,
spreads its sparkling newness,
its bright-washed cloth-of-green,

in another cycle,
to brighten winter-cold days.

Hounds of Winter

For the dverse prompt. A sonnet because The Winter’s Tale = Shakespeare = sonnet. There are two titles in there, and almost a third. I stuck an article into Roses in (the) snow to make it scan.

Hounds of winter

The hounds of winter howl the moon, the sky,
Pin-pricked with stars, only a night away
Throws back the song, we hear the echoes die,
And on a lonely hill we wait for day.

The hounds of winter tread the ocean sky,
Its cloudy waves, no need of ship and sail,
Their breath, the north wind, teeth snap hue and cry,
And growl the deep notes of a winter’s tale.

Yet in the night fields tracked with pad and claw,
The year lies sleeping, warmed by deep earth’s glow,
Cradling seeds, roots waiting for the thaw,
And perfume-petaled roses in the snow.

Should these dark hounds pause, sniff the wintry air,
They’d scent the spring stir in their icy lair.

Re-wilding the mundane day 6

A toad poem for Paul Brookes’ December challenge.

Tactical retreat

Rain and flood tides
fill the river plain,
willows wade in water,
paddle their roots
in overflowing ditches,
the stream’s a torrent,
and in the cowshed,
a toad swims slowly,
stoically along the drain
and under the door.
We watch her rhythmic
breast stroke, pulling
against the flow,
temporary evacuation,
a lesson in coping.

Green tales and changing skies

The form Paul Brookes chose last week was the curtal sonnet, devised by Gerard Manley Hopkins. This is my attempt at the form.

Green tales and changing skies

These changing skies above, we walk the trees
And tread the path of fallen poplar leaves,
Brown-turning as the gold of summer fails.
As slow as heron-flight, the bright time flees
With gentle grace, so nothing truly grieves,
Though cold is rising in dusk’s misty veils.

There is green still, just look. Beneath the growing grey,
Green grows, rosette-creep, root-tangle that weaves
Carpet-patterns, dabbed with sun, and exhales
Such light, whispering, as night slips into day,
Earth tales.

Grey not tender

For the dverse prompt, using the line from Celia Dropkin’s poem, Sullivan County:

In the tender gray, I swim undisturbed

Grey not tender

Sky is full of clouds above the cliffs, where gulls hang in the tender grey. I swim undisturbed in water that is cold, grey, not tender. The light is cold, grey, harsh for this end of summer. The gulls don’t care and laugh as they dip and glide, masters of the wind.
These are their elements, wind and water, not mine. They embrace the soft grey, the wind that ruffles feathers and the dark swell. They dive, splash, scream, rise and flip with the wind, while I plough a ragged furrow laboriously. The water furrow becomes shingle and grey pebbles, and I plough ahead, suddenly heavier and the wind colder.
You’ll be there up at the house, reading or doing some useful job. Not looking seaward. Not looking for me. You’ll have lit the stove in the kitchen, it will glow red and comfortless.

Re-mundaning the wild day 5

For Paul Brookes’ December challenge.

Tree works

A tree holds many worlds,
beneath-bark galleried,
leaf-sheltered insect hatcheries,
architecture of bird and squirrel
homes, held tight in forks,
scooped out within.

A tree grows its own tools
to climb, expand, increase,
spreads deep foundations
to gather up hillsides and valleys.

I gather a handful of acorns,
watch a child
with a spoon,
planting.

Ship

From yesterday’s random words.
Painting

Ship

The ship heads north,
course fixed, the wheel lashed,
and wind bites sharp
as the cracking ice.
No one will reach home.

In heavy seas, the bell rings,
below, the radio crackles,
smoke streams
in the uncertain verticality
of a wild ocean.

Nowhere under the sun is safe,
but when there is only water
underfoot, fear swims in every gut,
a shoal of mackerel,
or the white teeth of sharks.
We reach for amulets.

They throng the quay,
waiting, hoping, beneath a black sky
and the white of gulls screaming.
Storm cloud scrapes roofs,
wave crests. A bell tolls.

Night deepens with no stars,
flying cloud, and rain driving arrow-flights.
The crowd grows, leaning inward on itself.
Too far away to hear,
a ship’s bell answers.

Re-wilding the mundane

Not exactly on prompt today. This is for Paul Brookes’ December challenge.

Butterflies

White Admiral steers a course
about the garden
Petit Sylvain woodlander
dips in and out of green shade
sips from honeysuckle trumpets
sticky sweet drawn here
to this rampant plant-pillar.

I sit beneath
sip hot steamy tea
dipping into memories
of other gardens.