Jane Dougherty's Blog, page 54

Winter evenings

For the dverse prompt.

Winter evenings

Winter evenings, when the house
smells of nutmeg and ginger
and apples stewing with cloves,

when the draught beneath the door
nips at ankles, and the windows
are veiled in steam,

when the stove crackles and leaks
a pall of smoke, and there are cats
and sleeping dogs on every chair,

and the night sky sings with sparks
and stars, and the hot peppery red
of Tuscan sunsets seem so far away,

I look inwards, listening to laughter,
and take your hand, their hands,
and the smallest hands of all,

and think ,this is not so bad.

Phoenix hopes

Phoenix hopes

Smoke on the hill
where the broken grey stalks of harvest stand
a cloud of yellow-gold chaff
and a breeze rattling the poplar leaves

but no fiery blaze
hoarse bird cry
no veil of dripping feather-flames.

Perhaps when it comes
the rain will sow green seeds
and find some magic left
amid this ash and man-dust.

Everyone had a gran, only a few of us had mine

For the dverse prompt.

Everyone had a gran, only a few of us had mine

Talk the hind leg off a donkey,
Tea weaker than a Jesuit’s piss,
Living off the pig’s back,
There’s more Paddy Reillys than one,
There’s no show without Punch.

The expressions she used
coloured my life,
painted features on the language,
made it laugh.

Random word generator and other things

Yesterday I was too busy and preoccupied to post anything. Today I have:

Made a hedgehog house and café, away from the fence. The dogs scream at the poor thing as it tries to have a quiet meal under the plum tree.
Watched a young deer leaping through the meadow, the heron circling looking for water.
Written a letter to the tax people.
Walked the dogs and preempted a violent meeting with Imelda (cat) twice.
Made a hospital appointment.
Watered all the things in pots with water from the well.
Made a minestrone and the dogs’ dinner.
Written a few poems.
Revised a bit more of a manuscript.
Watched in admiration the changing light in this warm autumnal breeze.

Here, for those who would like to use it, is a selection of words that I didn’t post yesterday. Quite a good one, I think.

There are strange things hiding in these strings of random words, the limping laugh and untidy cry, a venomous cure, clam oil, ruddy muscle (or mussel) and the insistence on milk. And there are whole tragedies, the irate uncle with a secret, who imbibes until his state reaches alert, and the attractive skier now a grey stiff. Ultra regret.

This is what I got, a cadralor, I think. I chose this Chagall because it’s bright and full of music and movement, but also ambiguity.

Imponderables

1.
We are a barbarous race,
build bonfires of all that is good
and scrape up scraps of tawdry leavings,
gewgaws and glitz, to venerate.

2.
The peace breaks, a muttering in the air.
Did the wind swing the bell,
or does it toll in alarm at the change,
a gale gusting from the ocean?

3.
Bird-talk, a busy painting,
a concert hall’s swollen sound,
laughter that dive-dips, the colour of jay’s wings,
the rhythm section of the chiff chaffs.

4.
Speaking of God, I see him striding, the curé,
as if he still evokes fear,
seeing only the ghosts of the long-dead,
who would have bowed at his passing.

5.
There is something grandiose
in snow-capped mountains,
and secrets shared with a cat, a baby,
someone who will never tell.

Sestina

Paul Brooke’s threw out a challenge last week, to write a sestina. He posted the results on his blog today. You can read them here, and possibly get an idea of why the sestina is not a popular form!

This is mine

The turning of years

This light too bright, too harsh to see
The turning of the year, the last
Of all the golden leaves. The bird
That sang so sweet, we see it fall
And lie in downy feathers, curled
In its dead grace and our deep sorrow.

Joy is ever cast with sorrow,
Shadows shape the forms we see,
Night-dark is the foil to stars that fall.
What was the first light’s now the last,
Time spins in timeless spirals curled
And teaches songs to each dumb bird.

So few springs of life, the bird
Has no time to spend on sorrow.
From soaring in the blue, to fall
And never rise, it cannot see
An end to flight, the place, the last
Nest where in death it will lie curled.

The gales and leaves of autumn curled
About the trees that shelter bird
And wild things ’gainst the cold. The last
Days, summer-mild, have gone, and sorrow
Hangs in bare black boughs that see,
Leafless, blind, how all their children fall.

Nothing is wasted, each windfall
Is taken home where cubs are curled,
For winter’s long, too far to see
The end and plenty, vole and bird
That spring breeds fat. Times of sorrow
Are still to come. With luck, we’ll last.

It comes to all of us at last,
However high we rise, we fall
And leave this life in grief and sorrow.
Look, in the leaves brown-curled,
Its head beneath a wing, the bird
Another spring will never see.

Joy and sorrow come, though neither last,
And we see red flames dance at each leaf fall,
Spring curled in the heart’s song of each bird.

End of summer painting

I thought the Oracle was going to give me a cadralor. What I have isn’t quite a cadralor, more a string of bright images to remember this summer by.

End of summer painting

If only I could make music,
make the note-words
that would drive away the sadness,
pigeons against a blue sky.
But water runs, the moon rises,
and still all I hear is silence.

How do you get under the skin of a rock?
The red of sunset clings like a stain,
though the sea washes over and over.
The colour fades in the moonlight
and sunlight, but the smell lingers
beneath the salt crust.

Summer through,
birds tongue symphonies.
I let my feet wander where they will
among the dry stuff and seeds
of spring flowering, listening to the wind
rattling leaves instead of rain.

Mist in the city
is never this diaphanous thing
that veils green and softens spikes and thorns,
coalesces into droplets that contain worlds.
It is creeping damp,
greasy shoddy stretched thin.

Beauty swims in this ocean of tepid air,
drifts on feathered wings, golden chaff.
Sunset tastes of honey
and the purple bells of heather.
It rings like the stars and the soft breathing
of sleeping companions.

The air changed today

The air changed today

Wind
wild soft
high or gusting
always restless
riffles what is left
of summer leaf
the languid torpor
that was never peace
an uneasy muttering
when birdsong fell silent.

Too many mounds
of ash lie
drifts of dying breath
incubating embers.
Too many bones
flake their whiteness
like snow.

Morning scents

Morning scents

This morning misted pale and golden-leafed,
swelled in calm and peaceful warblers’ songs,
a sky of cloudless blue, a wind that combed
its fingers through the treetops’ ruffled hair.
And yet the mist clung fast despite the sun,
its wisps as pale as smoke. The smell of wood
and resin, burning torches in the west,
beyond the silence, crackling splits the air.
Those nights of flame and darkness are still near
and chiff chaffs rattle warnings. Do we hear?

Final fury

Final fury

This hot air twitters
with swallow-swoop
its sea-sand light
flickers cloud-banked
thick as the smoke
of a funeral pyre.

Another Lady

For the dverse prompt, inspired by this painting by Lee Madgwick.

Another Lady

They kept her like a fairy apple tree,
out of sight and out of careless mind,
no one to touch her ageless face,
her hands forever folded in her lap.

A treasure none would ever see,
and she no man would ever know,
nor ever look nor hear the sounds
of singing, water lapping some boat’s prow.

Until the sea took pity on her plight
and sent a barque, a gull to lead the way,
the lover that she dreamed of looked away,
and set his horse to travel other roads.

The window’s there, the cracks, for all to see,
the boat, the empty water wide,
but the lady who the world was not to see
is gone, to where the river still runs free.