Jane Dougherty's Blog, page 57

Pastoral

Painting Kryzhitsky: Landscape with a pond

Pastoral

Quiet
full of sound
still as leaves
shivering in the breeze
morning grows
a painting
touch
by delicate touch

~ from tree to tree ~

warblersong
after summer silence
a gentle ripple
water music
and the sky is veiled
grey
soft enough
to line any nest.

¡ Ya hemos pasado !

A poem I wrote to the rather unlikely photo that was this month’s prompt from Visual Verse. They didn’t want it, but after the time I spent working out how to type upside down exclamation marks, I can’t let it go to waste. You can see the pic and read the selected poems (of which Kerfe’s is one) here.

¡ Ya hemos pasado !

Ils ne passeront pas !
said Général Nivelle of the Germans at Verdun.
No passarán !
said La Pasionaria of Franco and his traitors.
You shall not pass!
echoed Gandalf.

And today, in or out of reality,
what do we have to add?
You can fuck right off!
This is mine, and it’s staying mine!
Go home, you’re not coming here!

Will this be our contribution to the fight for liberty,
our barricades be walls and gunboat patrols?
Will we take to the streets
only to protest against compassion?

No worse perhaps than those who went before,
our hands are no bloodier.
The past too was cruel and brutal,
and we are kinder to kittens.

Perhaps our crime is indifference,
because horror is banal,
our passions vicarious,
enacted on a screen,
voyeurs of a virtual existence.

If I ruled the world

it would be my choice to redistribute wealth, the surplus, unearned and obscene wealth, to rebuild stricken societies.
It would be my choice to give all women autonomy over how they dispose of their own bodies and how they construct their lives.
It would be my choice to ban the possession of all firearms, the torturing of animals for sport, entertainment or to make cosmetics silky-soft as well as unnecessary.
It would be my choice to close down the meat and dairy industries and grow kinder foods.
It would be my choice to close all places of worship and teach philosophy in schools, not religion.
It would be my choice to take a great number of rotten, corrupt and morally bankrupt world political and business leaders to the edge of a very high cliff and push them over it.
But they’re choices I won’t ever be offered. And most people would judge, that is probably a good thing.

The end of something

The end of something

1.
Waking is a dog-bite, rapid, unforgiving.
It leaves scars of the night,
snaps tight on dreams,
leaving only a scattering
of feathers.

2.
You walked in distant places,
the dusk swilling around your walking shape,
your face a cloud.
This morning, a smile says more
than words.

3.
We met a dog, hunter,
its approach hesitant, eyes evasive.
The sharp bark of command to return
was like an electric shock.
Galvanised.

4.
This season is sad as the death of trees,
of partings, getting older,
watching understanding dim.
We retreat into our shells
for comfort.

5.
If, when this time passes,
we could walk without fear
that the sky may fall on our heads,
rivers may run again, and next year,
the roses.

It just needs one

The year
grinds on hinges,
red-hot, raking dry stalks,
leaf-fall, a crackling Mount
Vesuvius,
waiting.

Haibun for paper shelters

For the dverse prompt.

There are shelters within shelters within shelters: wrapped in a coat, inside a room, inside a house, beneath a roof, in a country with government and laws and no war. Umbrellas. But from some things there is no shelter, no higher shelter that keeps us all safe.
I walked in the forest today and saw the fern fronds brown and dead beneath mossy trees, their leaves shed in survival mode, and the dead snake-skin of an empty gully where only echoes run.
We are running along dry, leaf-filled gullies. And when the rain comes, no big car or swimming-pooled palace will be shelter from its fury.

Fox digs out the hole
in parched clay. Mouse sees only
a giant’s shadow.

End of summer walk

The weather is breaking, storms coming up from Spain, so we profited from the cooler temperature to take the dogs walking in the deep dark forest just over the river at Mas- d’Agenais and along the Garonne and the canal lateral à la Garonne.

The light was strange, the sky pale blue behind ragged pale grey cloud. We saw no one and nothing except birds.

A large stream runs right through the forest, cutting a deep gully as it winds around huge tree roots. It’s completely dry at the moment, full of dead leaves, crossed by fallen tree trunks, and here and there, deep pools full of brackish water.

We followed the dry stream for about a kilometer but the silence and the strange, flat light were oppressive. Even the photos have come out grainy.

We took the road along the Garonne home, stopping to walk a way along the river to watch the herons, egrets and swans. As usual, they were on the opposite bank.

At Lagruère, we joined the canal latéral, the Toulouse-Bordeaux section of the canal du Midi.

This is what I had resting on my shoulder most of the time.

Approaching town across the bridge. This time the photo suffers from the state of the roads.

She wishes to turn back the tide

Another attempt at the Word Generator, trying to get something more concise. Didn’t work. The Oracle knows what she wants to say.

She wishes to turn back the tide

Belling of hunting hounds
chase the wild thing,
lean, hungry after the drought.

This country is hard as iron
beneath paws run ragged.
Heal the weak, she calls,

from her cave above glittering sand,
her prison (hands only reach so far,
and oceans intervene).

The key slips into minor, her voice fades,
and across the miles and miles of water,
paws slip, jaws close.

We stumble once again
on the march towards humanity.
She turns away, pulls a veil across her face,

as the tide rises in waves of oblivion
to smooth the wish runes
in the wet sand.

Random word generator poetry

A selection of words for anyone looking for a Sunday prompt. My poem follows.

Galloping

Sun rises in the silence
like the tolling of a bell,
rolling over stricken treetops,
not golden fall but the fall
of godlike things, charred and dead.

Once, there were swamps and giant reptiles here,
now dead frogs litter the lane,
feathers drift in dry ditches
where cats crouch,
their eyes narrow slits, distant.

The story fills a thousand books,
how it was, is now and will be.
Fish still glint in dwindling pools,
too many float in the liquid heat.

Soon the rifles will sound again,
the cracks in the armour widen,
and I fear we will follow the echoes
of the last flying hooves.

Standing on the edge of this moment
with the internal clamour
of jangled connections
I search the trees, oaks still green.
Blackbirds.

Remembering the wild

An odd coincidence, yesterday a friend and I were exchanging linguistic references, words to describe places and features derived from Old Norse. Ings is one of them, meaning a damp marshy place or low-lying field. The suffix ‘ing’ appeared twice on the first line of words today.
Just for the record, ‘sausage’ was on the third page. I suspect the Oracle is just winding me up.

Remembering the wild

1.
The ings were marshy once,
water meadows and full of life,
mist, blue and green and singing.
I’ve watched them dry, drained and paved.
Cars park there now in their cold, dead space.

2.
From my bed, I can watch the moon,
listen to her night music,
swooping low over silvered fields.
Moonlight like sunlight has its own smell,
the waxing and waning of the year.

3.
More rain drills the dust
and plucks petals from the tired roses.
This dog end of summer hangs its head
accepting the beating of the wind,
lying down beneath the deluge.

4.
When you were small, we walked in the forest
beneath trees taller than you had ever seen.
You clung to my hand, listening
to the wild rustlings, staring
into shadows where primal fears lurked.

5.
Gulls scream, feet raking the foam,
raucous, rowdy, relishing the sinking pinks and reds of the day.
I spread my arms, the last sun gilds
skin unfledged in the feather-wind;
all birds in this dusk light.