Jane Dougherty's Blog, page 63

Silver songs

For the dverse prompt.

Silver songs

When you are sleeping deep, and night
is full of stars and tender light,
my lips will breathe into your ear
words only your heart’s pulse will hear;
don’t fear the dark, the moon’s fierce beams,
for I will wrap you in my dreams.

Wind voices

Wind voices

Wind from Africa,
sand-cloud billows,
shakes the poplars dry,

rattles the water-hiss from the leaves,
leaves only the angry crackle of breaking
and the distant tonguing of flames.

Random word generator

100 random words for any Sunday poets feeling too hot to look any further for inspiration, followed by the poem they gave me.

This ocean is dry

I watch the curved fall of a grey feather,
wind-cradled, while pigeons murmur lullabies,
and rain whispers, a waking dream,

where feet skim snow, skin tingles
with the sting of cold flakes, ice cracks,
but the sound bends back into the now,

the crisp tread is brown and brittle,
the sucked dry stalks of dead meadows,
and I skim sand-baked earth.

The waves of this ocean are billows of heat,
the sting woodsmoke, the smell of burning,
the patter of raindrops is the crackle of flames.

We are encircled by creeping fires,
the curved balancing feather falls,
caught in the wrong wind.

What we would do, if we could

Painting by Anders Zorn.

What we would do, if we could

1.
I would heave these shadows overboard,
watch them shred in the spray,
blow away in the mist,
and let the sweet sea-light
flood all the dark places.

2.
The dog with black ears
keeps a wary eye on the drunk,
singing now, but when he remembers
his bitterness with the world,
he will heap it all on that uncomplaining head.

3.
Sun bakes beach sand brittle,
shrivelling the green of spring,
and we are blinded by wave-glitter.
There’s a haven over the water, they say,
but who dares swim in such fire?

4.
A chaffinch sings in the summer tree,
filling the holes in the silence.
Flowers bloom between your words,
and you ask, how I can be sad in such a garden.
You don’t notice the roses falling.

5.
Just spread grass beneath my feet,
forest shade about my shoulders,
let the wind make music in the leaves
and let me sit with you
while the rain drops diamonds.

Fly away

Fly away

One day
follow the birds
fly away
I might

if one day
these trees fall
follow the leaves
fly away
yellow as pale dawn
as the ashes of sunset.

Barley mow

Barley mow

Wind mutters through the heat
twisting dead flower heads
wringing the necks of the dying.

Grinding clatter of harvesting
begins again, balancing fear
of struck sparks against loss—

dry gold turning to ash
beneath this sun
burning up the blue.

Fame

Fame

I hear I have a poem
that’s going to the moon,
a poem in a bottle,
tossed upon cloudy seas.

The night cast a ribbon of moonlight,
a net of star-fishing moonlight
and tapped on this old wooden door.

Perhaps one bright fire-sitting night,
when she has nothing else to do,
she might take down this book and slowly read
of what, I disremember.

I hope someone thought to pack
the moon some Billy Yeats too.

Tomorrow oblivion

There will come a metaverse day
when these falling leaves
and the warbler’s complaint,

the chicory blue, springing
from the ashes of summer grass,
will all be a myth,

remembered by the last
of the dispossessed,
before the néant.

As the heat subsides

The trees mark the course of the stream. The house is on the other side.

The other side of the lane, opposite the sunflowers, the woods where the boar live.

Along the meadow where the lane crosses the stream, parched and almost silent, where the corn field meets the trees, a wild boar appeared. In the dusk, dark as a bear, massive, unperturbed, a force of nature equal to the storm brewing above his head. The sky means nothing to pigs, an unknown, unseen. The earth, with its scents and riches is what matters.

Chaos above,
clouds in tatters,
heat one with the wind,
incensed, striking sparks
with thunderstones.

Screaming

Yesterday was infernally hot, and not too far away in the pine forests of the Gironde, it was an inferno. The inferno continues, and cooler is only relative to unbearable. The warblers are singing again and the wood pigeons are cooing their soothing verses, but there is still no rain.
There will be violent storms this evening, but bringing only thunder and lightning and high winds. The red heat alert has moved to wildfire alert, the lightning of a rainless storm could start a conflagration anywhere in these tinderdry lands.
I’m tired of hearing silence, the climate disaster nowhere on the political agenda. The cost of living ie the cost of petrol, is so much more important than the reality of dying.
Our world is burning, our home, but we cheer on the Tour de France and argue about pronouns and the weight of the average school satchel.
I’m tired of hearing only the crackling of the flames.

Why do birds sing
when the sky reflects only the anger
of the parched earth
shrunken and cracked yawning wounds
and the crisp brown of tinder?

Why do the wood pigeons
persist in feeding their chicks
among the fringed leaves of the mimosa tree
when the sun is a demon
and the stream has run dry?

Being only human, I have no answer,
know nothing of giving so much
and expecting nothing in return.
I know only how to take,
to start the fires.