Jane Dougherty's Blog, page 51
October 6, 2022
Folktober challenge day 6
This is my poem based on the image of the Cailleach. You can find all the contributions to Paul Brookes’ challenge here.
The wise women of the world
They come in twos, the women
who turn the seasons, or more often threes,
bringing birth, plenty, and easing into death.
Always the women, who rock the cradle,
who sweep the snow, banish the ice,
and spring snowdrops from the damp earth,
they bring down the milk, raise the grain,
sooth and smooth the worried frowns,
touch the sky, walk the earth.
The faces change,
wrinkled with the drying winds of winter
full and apple-bright with spring,
but all walk in beauty or stately majesty,
the year long, taking their cue from the moon,
the tides and the singing birds,
leaving the sun with his one smooth face,
to cast his beams, bask in hero worship
when summer sprawls sweet and mild,
but careless that in wintertime,
when fires splutter and cold famine
sits at table, his smile has no warmth.
October 5, 2022
Too much
Painting by Lionel Walden
Too much
Too much moonlight
to see the depth of the starry sky;
soft silver sifts down
through the empty miles,
filling our eyes with secrecy.
Poplars rustle like rain,
falling from the cloudless night,
and the dead brown leaves
sigh in the south wind,
ebb tide in a lonely cove,
footsteps departing.
Folktober challenge day 5
For all the contributions and to see the ekphrastic prompts, please visit Paul Brookes’ blog.
Here is my poem, inspired by the image of a Leprechaun.
The dwindling of greatness
They had faces like the sun,
hair black as midnight
or bright as spun gold.
They had magic in their blood
and every bone, bird-bone, hare-bone
and the long bones of the deer.
They were feather and star-light,
proud as the antlered hart,
wise as the oldest salmon,
and flowers sprang in the prints of their feet.
They were music and poetry,
sweet as honey, dark as the ocean,
and their words shaped the world,
but they shrank in the cold
sin-washing of the priests,
twisted by the conqueror’s mockery.
They took their magic to another place,
bright, green and blue as river water,
and in their place, they left a gnome.
October 4, 2022
What we want, what we get
Giving the prompt a go for dverse.
The image is one I borrowed a while ago from Paul Militaru. Thank you, Paul, I’m giving it another outing.
What we want, what we get
We can’t all live in fast city sprawl
where people sleep on cardboard
outside shops that guard their doors
because security theft and the poor stink
and we can’t all walk the midnight streets
the midnight that lasts all night till dawn
in the squalor of drugs and sharp-eyed thugs
and all the dead-eyed do for drugs
and we don’t all like the lights
that never blink or the stink of drink
from every open door, or the piss
that hits you every corner next to every bar
we don’t all want to live where
old ones daren’t go out when sun has set
and young ones can’t go home at all
among stray cats and dogs that cringe
behind the bins, the misery of it all.
Some of us live low in the slow lane
where people take their poverty indoors
the bars close early and streets are dead
where there are no doctors so don’t get sick
and all the shops are boarded up
and there are no lights at night.
But there are no lights at night
and we can see the stars.
Folktober Challenge Day 4
Today the images were of witches and merrows. You can read all the contributing poems on Paul Brookes’ site here.
This is my poem.
Merfolk
Sea calls in wave-dance
and swaying gardens of kelp
where anemones flower.
We wear foam in our hair,
and our hands entwine hard
and fast as anchor ropes.
Bodies like bullets fit our space
we cleave to our own.
Our hands weave stories in deep water,
words spoken in fish-whispers,
legs fused to forge paths
faster than your thoughts.
Those born of the sea
will die seafolk,
and nothing,
not even your darkest desires
can change a single
silver-glittering scale.
October 3, 2022
Melancholy
A quadrille for dverse.
Melancholy
We follow paths that wind about
the woods where jays and blackbirds shout,
and fox tails tall
bend dappled shade with feather-fronds,
that gather round the shallow ponds
where red leaves fall.
Our footprints track the summer sand,
autumn tears dried with your hand,
Pantoum and witchcraft
Paul Brookes has posted the contributions to two of his challenges today. Last week’s form was the pantoum. You can read them all here.
This is mine. More moss hedgehogs.
Cleaning the moss from the roof tiles
When you scraped the roof,
small mossy heaps
of dry grey ghosts
lay scattered around the house
Small mossy heaps,
once green hedgehogs, roof-rootling,
lay scattered around the house
amid more drought debris.
Once green hedgehogs, roof-rootling
Beneath a brazen sky,
amid more drought debris,
await the cooling of the year.
Beneath a brazen sky,
we gather up cool shadows,
await the cooling of the year,
greening with the touch of autumn.
We gather up cool shadows
of dry grey ghosts,
greening with the touch of autumn,
from when you scraped the roof.
Today is also Day 3 of his Folktober challenge, and the inspiration was this illustration of Baba Yaga
Forest women
Forest women lived in witch light,
drank the blood of children,
flew the night on crow-back.
Hags, unloved, lived alone
with their magic, grudgingly useful,
until the lean times and sick times
offered them up, wizened fruit
on unconsecrated branches.
October 2, 2022
Green change
Cadralor inspired by today’s random word generator.
Green change
1.
We wed the green and growing
to the grim grind of fabricated things,
tossing our debts to tree and planet
in the poisoned river.
2.
Glaciers melt unremarked,
mountains slide to the sea,
but we kneel to old gods
and to cast out old demons.
3.
Should we ever look beyond the cliff’s edge
to see the dark sail approaching,
would we jump?
Would we know that this means the end?
4.
The questions chalked
on a childhood blackboard have changed,
our language adjusted to accommodate
new lies, new illusions, to deny the quicksand.
5.
Yet if we peer through the mists,
the copper and bronze glitter
of ancient times still linger, the hope
that we might be better than we are.
Random word generator
I’m posting a selection of words for anyone who wants to work on a poem or piece of flash fiction. I shall get back to it later.
Folktober ekphrastic challenge
Please have a look at the poetry Paul Brookes has posted today. You can find all the contributions here.
The Aos Sí ride out
They left the holy ground to walk
the mortal earth, their voices like
the wind, and starlight on their brow.
From hollow hills with stony sills,
from blackthorn, among rowan rings,
they ride the night, eyes piercing bright,
and what they seek is at my breast.
Sleep quiet, little one of mine,
the fairy folk ride storm and tide,
their horses foam-maned, tread the waves.
Be still, I hear their voices call,
you listen, gold that calls to gold,
and I can only hold you tight
and hide your brightness with my hair.
