Jane Dougherty's Blog, page 44

Random word poetry

Here is a selection of words to be rearranged and adapted. My poem follows, a cadralor.

Doors

1
Empty vase on the shelf,
collecting dust and dead bluebottles,
remembers the days
when she filled it with flowers.

2
Letters on the mat are ominous
these days, no one runs downstairs
heart pounding, at the sound
of the clatter of the letterbox.

3
I never let you in, never listened,
when you promised you would always stay,
too afraid that you would leave, to look
deep enough, to where the truth lay.

4
It tastes of rain and sunshine,
salt breeze and clouds dashing across water.
It tastes, smells, and I can see it,
but never catch its shadow.

5
The wind rises too high for comfort,
trees groan, crack, but here, within these walls,
a smile, a certain look, is armour enough
against the flying debris of dead things.

A pause in the tempest

The Oracle trying to keep things in perspective. And pushing that sausage.

I’ve just seen the photos for Paul Brookes’ cloud challenge, and this poem seems to fit. You can see the images here.

A pause in the tempest

Blue immensity,
this wind-driven change,
this turning into the cold,

we must pass through,
almost a dream, sea-deep,
not death not sleep.

We follow in the seals’ wake,
their rolling, tunnelling
passage, to the place

where the whispering of the sun
is the language of the moon,
the tongue of the planet.

Desecration

Paul Brookes is asking for Tutankhamun-inspired poems today. This is mine.

Desecration

In the dry dark cracked open,
gold is mute, gemstones without fire,
air without breath.

The walls crawl
with picture-written magic,
in processions of silence.

Lamplight pierces the gloom
of rooms sealed in lead, beeswax
and the deep indifference of time,

where corpses, babies and a boy,
dried, gutted and embalmed, wrapped
and barded with amulets and prayers,

are still dead.

Clouds day 4

This is my poem in response to all Paul Brookes’ cloud photos. You can see them on Paul’s blog here.

Sky-birth

There are days when the sky sucks the life
from the earth, feeds on the stillness
the dry, the wet, the leafed and the stony,
draws all into the cloud-bloat above.

We crouch beneath the great presence,
longing for the rupture, the breaking of waters,
to birth a sea of tranquillity.

Clouds challenge day 3

The photos and poems are on Paul Brookes’ blog here. My poem is based on the third image PB3.

Mirror sky

In the light and silence, a single presence
that stalks unseen across the wilderness,

we listen, hoping almost for the patter of rain
to furnish the emptiness with familiar comfort.

Times like this, we shrink from gazing
on the face of the water, on the anger beneath,

when the complicit sky oppresses, reflecting
the darkness swelling in the lake’s deep heart.

First days of autumn

First days of autumn

Wild when the wind whistles
shrill through joints and cracks
and shakes the dark trees
like a dog with a rat.

I hear the rat scream, the scratch
of branches against stone, windowglass,
the dog howl in triumph.

The darker half has begun,
nights will stretch long and full of stars,
and the cold will deepen as we look
into the face of space.

The first days of the dark

The first days of the dark

The dark has begun in golden light
and golden leaves, blue river water
rushing and a soft south wind.

I feel them in the sun shafts,
where midges dance between the trees,
the dead generations and their gentle hands,

their quiet voices that mingle
with the river music, chiff chaff,
warbler and the bright robin.

Wait awhile, they say,
the sun is not yet set,
the summer not yet gone.

Think of us when winter comes,
watch for us among the cold stars,
and be content.

Clouds

Paul Brookes’ new challenge, writing what we see in the clouds. It started yesterday, and I didn’t post my poem. Here it is with today’s poem. You can see the photographs that inspired the poems on Paul’s blog, here and here.

Volcanic cloud

Lava flow
cracked grey
a glimpse of Pompei
beneath the smothering ash

and deeper
the billowing sea
and the dead light
guiding them home.

Wild hunt

Even in the sky, perhaps only in the sky,
the wolf, the boar, the winged beauties race.

Wolf-grey, swept back wings, a day of autumn
fury, as the world turns into steel-blue winter.

Earth summer-baked, now hard with iron-cold,
watches the wild ones gallop, hopes in their return.

Remembering

For the dverse post. I hope dogs are allowed. They don’t need an explanation.

Remembering

It’s been a year since your heart spring broke
from too much winding, giving, loving,
since those deep brown eyes looked about
one last time to find mine,
before the drugged veil came down.

I hope they were there to guide your steps,
mother, perhaps a sibling, that your steps
grew young and light again, as they led you
into the spring, across the bridge,
to the great boundless field
where greyhounds run
forever and ever.

On the cusp

The random word generator gave me this (almost) cadralor.

On the cusp

1
Weeks pass, waylaid by silence.
No bell speaks to ring the change
from one half-year to the next, but
the fire is laid, a light into winter dark.

2
Dogs track rabbits, sniffing the remains
of their feasting all around the house.
Humans are not alone
in having a sense of humour.

3
The car stops by the river, a family
clambers across the river stones,
parents to plunder garden decorations,
children build a cairn.

4
In this quiet place of water noise
and wind among the last leaves,
the sky is noisy with chemical trails,
military visiting cards.

5
Pain throbs inside and out,
sunlight prickles, darkness howls,
but among the trees by the stream,
the only drum beat is the woodpecker.