Jane Dougherty's Blog, page 47

Be true

A rapid, unedited message from the Oracle, one she obviously thinks we are not hearing.

Be true

Be life
ripe and round and unstoppable as the dawn.
Point your finger into the shadows
and say, be still.
Let your feet crush the aching sorrows,
the pain and suffering,
your tongue still the worship of idle gods.
Wax and wane on the moon’s ocean,
not on the prodding of the crowd.
Be a rock in this world of fluctuating tides.

Hay-making coda

Hay-making coda

In the sun, the wind and meadow birds hunting,
the hay bales went,

all the sweet pastels and honey-hay of spring,
pressed and rolled away.

Like ancient stones tumbled in desert sand,
they leave no trace behind.

Folktober day 21

The image I chose for today’s poem is a painting of the Brazilian folk character, the Curupira, a wild protective spirit that sometimes hitches a ride on the back of a wild pig. You can read all of the poems and see the images that inspired them on Paul Brookes’ blog.

Every forest needs its Curupira

Your hair
deer-fox-squirrel-red
sun-fired in a glade
a vision-flash
caught in the tail of the eye

you pass
stopping the noise of the guns
with your trailing footsteps
prey but what and where?

Dogs sniff
question the air
the wild scent almost familiar
but not quite.

You trace your backwards path
in and out shooing deer and hare
before you
confounding and confusing

and sometimes in the half-shadow
when the sun turns a blind eye
your fearful wild magic
turns a man into a pig

makes him run squealing
into the line of fearful hapless fire
that shakes the jays from the trees
shrieking with laughter.

Firebird

For whoever needs one.

Firebird

Out of the blue
it flew
bolted and brass-banded
sturdy and steady as stork wings
heron stilts
a burnished brazen-backed
bird of happiness
just for you.

Summer storm wind

Summer storm wind

The wind has blown
golden with heat
and someone else’s summer

blown the flashing storm
the turning of a night
along the river

washed up on this tidal meadow
a bank of tired leaves
their flotsam fingers fluttering.

Folktober challenge day 20

Forr today’s challenge, I chose to write to the painting of the Blue Lady. Two reasons, she was from Temple Newsam in Leeds where I went to school, and because her story is a strange and sad one. You can read all the other poetry on Paul Brookes’ blog, and you can read the story of poor Mary Ingram here.

Pearls for a baby

Who would give pearls to a baby,
a string of bad luck,
too much to hold in tiny fists?

And then the highwayman,
at gunpoint
in the lonely dark,

took her pearls
and her mind, they said,
but perhaps

that was not all
he took, she lost,
she searched for,

in the round and round
of madness, the spiral that
could only end in death.

What did he expect?
Giving pearls to a baby
and a lifetime of bad cess.

Folktober challenge day 19

More ghostly poems today on Paul Brookes’ blog, and the images that inspired them.

The woman in white (again)

She always wears white.
No one would see, in the dark,
if she wore black.

And if no one
were to see
what would be the point?

Can you haunt
someone who doesn’t know
you are there?

Can you frighten
someone who doesn’t know
who you are?

And where does she go
in the daylight, when no one
would notice

her insubstantial transparency,
and waiting for night, how
does she fill up her time?

I wonder if such apparitions
of dead, virginal women
spring from guilty consciences,

only visible to men
who find it hard
to sleep at night.

Seed-fall and the moon

For the dverse prompt. Another outing for Kerfe’s lovely owl moon painting.

Seed-fall and the moon

Seeds are falling by moonlight,
the dried and the ripe. Listen
to the rattling of pods, plants,
trees, casting their children adrift
in the wind from the south
that blows and blows and blows.

Seed-fall and the flutter of finches,
fat before winter famine. Listen
to the trilling as they roost, watching
through the thinning leaves, for owl beacons,
scouring the night on silent wings,
grey shadows beneath the ripe moon.

Folktober challenge day 18

Please visit Paul Brookes’ blog for the images and the poems they inspired.

Ghost

Ghost,
the negative of ourselves,
the obverse side, a swollen tide
of fear of the dark within.

We clutch at their ephemeral shrouds,
hoping for a proof of something beyond death,
even if it is only the hollow beating of skin drums,
the clammy touch of fungus, phosphorescent glow,
an eternal pacing of the paths, the lightless lanes
where blackberries never grow
and blackbirds never sing.

The hare

A quadrille for dverse.

The hare

At the meadow’s edge I saw, where
the trees make shadows green,
pressed in the grass a form, hare
left showed where he had been.

The morning quiet’s broken,
by gunshot, eager sounds
of hunters’ sharp words spoken
and the belling of their hounds.

and the whole poem.

The hare

At the meadow’s edge I saw, where
the trees make shadows green,
pressed in the grass a form, hare
left showed where he had been.

The morning quiet’s broken,
by gunshot, eager sounds
of hunters’ sharp words spoken
and the belling of their hounds.

Are they looking for the wild thing
that rested by the hedge,
where the blackbirds and the thrush sing,
and the breeze sighs in the sedge?

Will they take the deer path, follow
tracks lost in the tangled trees,
or will they find the grassy hollow
where my hare rests? Hide him, please!

I hear the hounds’ wild crying,
voices urging, find the prey,
a russet flash, hooves flying,
of the deer that got away.

When silence falls, jay keeping
watch calls out in thankful praise;
somewhere a hare is sleeping
beneath the Good Ones’ watchful gaze.