Poetry – Jane Dougherty Writes

Spring slides

Spring slides stealthily into summer
covered by the staccato fire of crickets
bee-thrum
and the fluting conversation of orioles.

Bedstraw sheds honey beneath the shade
and in the hedges
among moss-lined twig-tresses
tiny bead-black eyes
watch the slow glide of buzzards.

Blue of fire

For the dverse prompt.

Blue of fire

Blue is the last to go,
when the waltzing pinks and whites and golds
are cold and grey with shadows,
and mist rising, dew dropping,
drained of day-life,
still as the ocean bottom.

I watch for pike where magpies waddled.

Above a wash of water-blue,
blue light,
the set sun, lingering by proxy,
pricked and pierced
by the jagged light of stars,
reefs in the deeps
where satellites float in their lonely glitter,
pretending to be meteorites or asteroids,

expensive toys lost in space,
where blue is fire.

World wakes

World wakes, slow and soft
as rain falling through the still grey.
Sleep never came;
the sound of wind and rain drumming
turned the wheel of the night,
and in the lulls, nightingales tried,
crickets,
to fill the gaps in the tune.
Dark soft sleep never came,
though grey dawn
and the gentle drumming came,
growing lighter with the light,
paler than sleep,
with the rising song of blackbirds
and dripping eaves.
Sleep never came,
but the light broke in softness,
and through the opened shutters
paleness of pink and white waved,
green-grey meadow grass glittered,
moon and mist-silver,
and the long night fled.

Hills

The hills are lush
with woods and meadows
silent but for cricket chirp
and songbirds singing
and nothing moves
but the wind
stirring stalks and feathers
and me walking the lane
through lush woods and meadows
stirring the echoes of cattle long gone
the cantilena of Italian voices
working their land
their dream of lush green
where now I walk
the hills
singing gently.

The wind that blew all night

Painting by Krzyżanowski

The wind that blew all night has stripped the leaves
and ripped the ivy from the wall;
its hot breath bringing summer from the south
has faltered, anger in its mouth.
Wild storms will come, I hear the urgent call
of songbirds sheltered by the wall,
and nothing battles in the higher air,
no wings are crumpled, tossed aside like chaff,
the magpie doesn’t leave her swaying nest,
a feathered anchor for her fledgling brood.
I hear alarm in every leafy sigh
and sough of branches, heavy with new leaf,
in every flower head with petaled crown
that fragile, bows, so soon to come to grief.

The sky is singing

The sky is singing,
cloud chords plucked by languid wind-fingers,
life and death songs of sun on sea,
where the wind blows waves
to break in foam feathers.

The sky sings salt
and night scents of invisible blooms,
enfolding silver-sheathed meadow grass
in the cool silence of fox and badger moon,
the cropping of monochrome deer,

and I listen to the bell flowers
chiming in the hedge,
the water ripple of birdsong,
running into summer,

give thanks to the rooted force,
rising and falling in beauty,
that makes all these tides
ebb and flow endlessly.

Nightingale sings

Nightingale sings the sun down,
the moon up and the stars.
He sings through the night time
and the daytime without pause,
while fox and vixen walk the path
through meadow grass, through night wind,
beneath soft rain of song notes,
round, ripe, silver moongaze,
and the scent of early roses
in the dew-dropping air.

the sky is swollen with wind,
too loud to hear protesting birds,
though the branches wave
with the anger of kelp thrashing sand-silt,
stirred up by the passage
of some monstrous fish.

Category: Poetry