Jane Dougherty's Blog, page 4

Stepping through the tall grasses

Stepping through the tall grasses

of fescue and cock’s foot, gold-crowned
with ragwort and goat’s beard,
plantain pollen floats in yellow clouds,
and dew-drenches
in the damp swish of bowed stalks.

There are treasures beneath and in the sky,
cloud-scurry before the rain,
and the trees sing solemn songs of
I remember, and when the river ran.

Blackbird and oriole melodies snatched by the wind,
nightingales in the wood, a cock crowing,
and acacia scent, fill these moments,

and I step with care through the high grasses,
let the pink and white and purple foam
of orchid flowers break against my boots,
for the wide world is distilled in their cupped faces.

The mill on the rock

Poem for dverse inspired by Erik Johansson’s image entitled Moulin de Mer

The mill on the rock

A house on a rock in a northern sea,
a house from a story I loved as a child,
the water of memory pours and turns
the great wheel of time that sifts the sea.

Wild puffins and kittiwakes skirl, their cloaks
as white and red candy-striped as shells,
and fly round the house-rock that mills the sea,
that sieves the pink coral wave-garnished kelp.

We came in a sea-green boat, purple sailed,
with emeralds that barnacled the prow
and we planted poppies around the rocks,
sweet indigo mussels that bloomed in the night.

Though that was a story, a dream ago,
and waves have washed all the gold threads away,
on a rock in the sea, a house full of shells,
and puffins and poppies still calls to me.

Fieldscape

Inspired by Kerfe’s Oracle 2 random words.

Fieldscape

Field furrows fall away
into the fold of the book,
green-growing on the next page,

striped and springing
with long-winged birds,
studded with the blood of poppies.

We watch in the caressing wind,
the rustling, whispering wind,
and the dashing shadows

of long-winged birds,
sweeping the soft brown mice
before them.

We watch as folded rustling wings
of barred earth-pigment stoop,
scoop in steely talons

and rise, glide across the vastness,
in search of a perch,
beneath the billowing sky.

Into the dark

For the dverse prompt.

Into the dark

It will end this year, this winter that will have no spring, perhaps on this day without a date. On a back street, dusky light falls from an orange sky onto bundles of human rags. On a suburban street of luminous green grass and white houses, the lights dim and fail. Somewhere a child wails. On the back street, a cat whisks out of sight behind plastic bags of refuse, ratting, and the last overhead train slows to a halt above a silent thoroughfare.
Running footsteps echo, a door slams. Automatic fire rattles at the end of a street eerily empty, where shop fronts glisten in the leaden stream of acid rain. There is nothing left, nothing to do but wait. Between wall and pavement, a lone daisy grows. I bend to pick it, to take its beauty with me into the dark.

Evening quiet

Evening quiet

Quiet is the trill of crickets,
belly laughter of frogs,
owl flute and bat flutter,
deer bark, fox scream,
a nightingale singing in the hedge.

Quiet the moon,
rising through ragged cloud sheets,
cormorants’ rapid beating wings,
the contented sigh of sleeping dogs,
mice patter in the attic dust,

but the quiet that follows after moonset,
in the wake of the swans, a closed book,
is the clustered presence of loved ones,
waiting just a handsbreadth
further along the road.

On the lake

On the lake

The woman in the lake, on the island in the lake,
among the trees, unseen,
a gentle movement like wings,
calls across the water,

to the man by the lake,
who stares at the island in the lake
with narrowed eyes, imagines
a winged woman, trailing veils of gauze.

She calls with the voice of birds,
the low guttural caress of furred things,
the murmur of leaves and water,

and he hears the song of birds,
the bark of a hind, the lapping of lake water,
the wind in the leaves,
but not what they say,

because the moon is rising and will set in the west,
the stars point their bright fingers towards the place,

and the trees shake their hair in the wind
that ruffles the water of the lake,
roosting blackbirds cluck uneasily, ruffle-feathered.

Go back, says the woman on the island in the lake,
to your bloodied halls, the clash or arms,
the coarse laughter of your men.
By your side is no place for me.

The man by the lake, wades deeper
through the reeds, through the rising wind
and the night birds’ cries, and he shouts
at the night, at the woman’s moon,

his bitter words of women’s faithlessness,
his empty threats, while the moon rises,
the waves rise, and push him homeward
in the laughter of the wind.

Some days

Some days

Some days are so full,
there are no corners left to fill,
no scraps of time as empty
as the gaps between the stars,
as last year’s nests,
a page with no words.

These are the days we speak of
in years to come, unwrapping the places,
people, all the things we said,

and I regret those empty times,
the moments of motionless time,
when we’d watch a falcon soar in the endless blue,
the complicated folding of a full-blown rose,
and listen to the orioles’ song,
the calling owls sounding the deep night air.

Night murmurs

Night murmurs

Across the stream a deer barks
as the twilight shadows grow,

and deep dark springs from beneath
trees, their branches reflecting

moonlight when clouds part—a pale
owl drifts, calling to its ghosts.

What songs do we hear of nights?

This started off as a sijo with 14-syllable lines, split into two lines of seven syllables. I added a seventh line of seven syllables just to make it a complete run of sevens. And the illustration is once again Kerfe’s splendid owl.

The doe hare

For the dverse prompt.

The doe hare

It’s over now the rough and tumble play,
Racing up the meadow down the hill,
As soon as there was sun to light the day,
At night the moon, a carefree doe until
The nestlings came, born running, quick and bright.
No burrow, just the overarching sky,
Their shelter meadow grass, and through the night
The darkness shields them from the fox’s eye.
No one sees the mother feed her young,
No track she leaves, no scent for fox to find,
And careless leaps away, soon lost among
The barbs of dog rose, bramble canes entwined.
Creature of the wind, the wild and free,
If you but thought, I’m sure you’d pity me.

The girl in the tower brushes her hair

A story poem from Kerfe’s Oracle 2 words

The girl in the tower brushes her hair

The gown trails its hem where bedstraw lies strewn,
and light falls silvered through opaque glass.

She brushes copper-coloured hair, butterfly-bright,
while dust motes dance in the silent air.

The greensward will swarm like a field of magpies,
chattering, strutting, joyous for the fine day that promises,

and she in the tower will brush the copper of her hair
and wish she knew how to curse,

to turn the road into a torrent, the forest an inferno,
to rouse a dragon in a forgotten cave.

From the cobbled bailey, she hears the jingle
of harness bells, the clatter of impatient hooves,

and the curse drops from her lips, becomes a prayer,
that they be not for her, not today.

But the voices rise like the voices of the damned,
familiar and unrelenting, clashing keen as sword blades.

She is a merchandise, changing hands, and crows call,
harsh as rusty hinges, as they drag the colour from the sky.