Jane Dougherty's Blog, page 7

National poetry month day 24

My poem for Paul Brookes’ ekphrastic challenge. You can see the art and read the poetry here.

Now

Nothing lasts forever,
not roses or trees,
cathedrals, pyramids
or wind-sculpted monuments,
not rivers, not rocks
old as the world, lapped
by the waves’ rough tongues to sand.

Nothing lasts forever,
not sorrow, not love or hatred,
certainly not happiness,
not even pain,

so I will cherish this moment
of soft rain, the black, white and red
rat-a-tat-tat woodpecker in the hornbeam,
the cheery-chappy calling
of the oriole pleased to be home,
because this moment
is all that matters
now.

National poetry month day 23

You can see the art that inspired my poem and read all the other contributors’ poems on Paul Brookes’ blog here.

Time passing

Here, the spring is almost over,
blossom gone, flown, leaving nests
full of soft-petaled chicks.

The winds have grown tender,
a mere murmur among new leaves,
and the nights are full of stars.

I watch the bustle of life, the bird-comings
and goings, hare-dance and deer grazing,
colours in the grass growing,
and I listen to all the singing of this earth.

I watch through the window,
from the first pale gold to the deep pink of evening,
the turquoise inking deeper dark,
the first stars swim to the surface of the sky,

and listen as the last bird finishes his song,
thinking of you, wherever you are.

Home(s)

For the NaPoWriMo prompt. Not very original, I expect many of us will write about our childhood home. I’ve never been back, and only recently looked it up on google earth. Changed utterly.
The two viewpoints in the poem are mine, and in italics, the person who bought the house when my parents sold it.

Home(s)

1.
I can slip into my childhood home at will, each room, the front room carpets, the old one and the new, the hall lino before and after, winter evenings sitting in front of the open fire, children’s programmes until the news then supper, the crayon drawings on the bedroom walls, the cellar stone-flagged and warm.

2.
The décor was tasteful, in places, clean, except for the scrawls and scribbles up to six-year old height around the children’s rooms, comfortable, worn, fireplaces that needed blocking up, the cellar so much wasted space. Outdated as large families.

3.
The garden was a paradise, bee-full, butterfly-floating where the cats roamed and we hid among apple trees and flowering shrubs jungle-dense, perfumed like Arabia.

4.
The plot was large, but so much work to get rid of the jungle and install order. Ripping up the stone walls and paths was a major operation and levelling the sunken gardens that were full of flying insects, attracted by the banks of plants.

5.
I go back to this place in dreams still, climb stairs, Turkey-carpeted, my room papered in orange and yellow flowers, from the window I’d watch magpies and starlings on the yard wall, tractors and milk carts rattling up the track from the farm, cows in the field, a fortress, impregnable.

6.
Once the yard wall was knocked down we could still only get in one car, and no street parking, no street, and the rooms were too big, ceilings too high, the garden never really looked like anything, too long, too much lawn to maintain.

7.
We didn’t stay long.

8.
I have never left.

Kimo

Last week, Paul Brookes chose the kimo form, like a haiku but without the kigo—three lines of 10, 7, 6 syllables, no rhyme, and a single static image. The lines can be ordered any way you like.
I found this one difficult to arrange to get a satisfying result. Poems that count syllables in general don’t appeal to me, and these lines of an arbitrary length seem like a constraint without a reason. If the lines were 11, 8 and 5 for example, it wouldn’t make any difference at all. In the end, I simply wrote a line of 23 syllables and broke it into the required segments. I might have been missing the point though.

1.
Train pulls in, we catch our breath,
in the stream of unknowns, her face alone
emerges in focus.

2.
I squint into the light of plum blossom,
pied magpie-swoop, as slate-grey
cloud rolls into dawn sun.

3.
Weeks of fruitless treatment, then that morning,
when his eyes opened clear, bright,
and blackbirds were singing.

Ponds

The first words the Oracle gave me (please, sausage, death) I have disposed of here:
Please, sausage, just die!

Ponds

Life flows from these deep green depths
where the slow fish rise and sink
in tidal synchronisation,

and the evenings are purple
through the low branches, sweet
with blackbirds and spring nightingales.

Here all speak the same tongue,
all listen for the song of the rain
to soften summer’s harsh edge.

National poetry month day 22

To see the artwork and read the poetry it inspired, please visit Paul Brookes’ blog here.

Crow

On a branch, on a park bench,
a café terrace lit by streetlights,
night comes to engulf all things,

dousing the gleam of white blossom,
pale hands moving in conversational gestures,
bringing sleep or restlessness.

Only crow, suffused with the black
of aeons of space and bird-time,
remains whole, integral,

brooding on tomorrow, all our yesterday’s
tomorrows, the long dark furrows,
leading back from the first nest.

Poem in Visual Verse

This is another of those strange images Visual Verse excels in, that inspires nothing at first, but generally ends up provoking something. Thank you to the editors for liking this loopity-loop poem.

Space sponge

Is it a plane, is it a bird,
or a loofah lost in space,
polyped and poulped, médused,
bewitched, bothered, bewildered etc,
Zeppelin-bellied, hoola-hooped,
playing the game
of who gets thrown out of the basket next?

Or a shipwrecked baguette,
sunken, spongified,
among figments and fantasies
of Aldebaran’s nightmares?

Coleridge would have known the answer,
seen it drifting on purple wings
among egrets and flamingos,
where he lay dreaming in a blue haze,

he’d have whispered it in Dorothy’s ear,
who would have whispered it in Willy’s,
who would have yawned and asked her
for another dozen fried eggs,
yellow and glistening
as a host of dandelions after the rain.

Delight

This morning I heard the first golden oriole of the year. Last year it was the 18th, year before the 17th. Regular as clockwork. Delight sums them up perfectly. For NaPoWriMo

Delight

in the sound
of the wind
in the trees
and mornings
of butter-light
over the field,

the scent of the roses
that bloom by the wall,
lizard-run,
bird-dabbing,
vines in the sun,

and the first ringing
woodwind
of oriole’s song
from the top
of his poplar
down by the stream.

The oboed,
the mellow-rich,
deep-golden sound,

melliflutes winter’s rout,
return of the sun,
buttercupped,
tansied
till summer
is done.

National poetry month day 21

Please visit Paul Brookes’ blog to see the gorgeous artwork that inspired this and the other poems today.

Nostalgia

Some things call to the past, to a nostalgia,
a loss. They call with majestic roaring
or small fish-mouthed silences,

oceans, regretful tears filling them full as fish,
a lonely barque drifting, only mysteries aboard,
wind-stripped blossom in a velvet eastern night.

We weep for what we have never known,
what we think we remember,
what we wish had been,

and the waves lap white and black stone
of cliff faces with their rough tongues rasped
like cats’, relentlessly, regretting nothing.

Peace and unquiet

This cadralor came out of the Oracle 2 random word selection. Thanks, Kerfe, for posting it.

Peace and unquiet

1.
We can walk in the silence of empty streets,
cloistered ruins or the columned solemn stateliness
of forest trees. Feet make no distinction.

2.
In the fold of the hills, a deer runs, racing the long beams
pouring across the grass from the rising sun.
Run, I whisper, don’t let them catch you on such a morning.

3.
We hear it in the quiet before the traffic begins to roar
and demand all our attention, the drumming, humming beat
of machinery in the windowless metal box.

4.
Suddenly the night splits, screaming, and a furtive rustling
becomes running feet. There are hours left before morning.
We let the stars stare, waiting for the sirens.

5.
There are places full of peace and places that never rest,
where the air vibrates discordant and shrill.
Here, comfort is never further than the reach of your hand.