Signing off

Just a note to everyone I haven’t replied to, first to apologise, second to say that I might not be around for a while as my computer is in its death throes and getting a new one at present is mission (almost) impossible.

That’s all folks. See you on the other side.

Waiting in line

For the dverse prompt.

 

The masked faces keep their distance but all I

want is the bread for the week and then I will

 

fly back to the leaky nest where birdsong filters

beneath the doors and mice pitter-patter

 

in the cupboards and dog and cats will come

out curious even pleased to greet me home.

 

So much might change but it won’t the masked

faces will change to bland indifferent ones

 

the moon will swell give birth to the stars

and shrink and tomorrow the hoopoes

 

will boom their spring beat as if the

world’s rhythm had not changed.

#Tanka Tuesday: Nest-building

A haiku for Colleen’s weekly challenge.

Photo ©David P. Howard

no time for singing

eaves aflutter with bright wings

nest-building twitter

Dawn

I love this place with its layers of song

and the traces of criss-crossing hoof and paw

bird voices calling taking it in turns

to send echoes racing.

 

I love it as I love Redon colours

the tragic beauty of a Marc

intangible elusive

brushed with fingertips never seized

always the onlooker.

 

We think we own because we have measured

signed papers handed over cash.

 

Wind blows.

 

Sunlight stretches leaves unfurl

blossom scatters in the wind.

A shower patters, ringing wild garlic bells.

The blackbird looks at me with bright eye,

tugs at a worm.

 

I watch the world whisk by

in the flash of a white scut.

At close of day

For the dverse quadrille prompt.

At close of day the light falls thicker,

golden syrup honey dew,

and shadows deepen in the hedges,

woodland, maple, oak and yew.

Remember when brash jingle- jangle

rattled every summer night?

The notes of blackbirds’ singing now

fill with wild beauty each twilight.

Pity the censorious

Evil writhes in glistening coils in the

scaled and furred hoofed and clawed

 

glistens in luxury and concupiscence

the moistly slip-sliding of nakedness.

 

Women tempting with apples breasts moon-

buttocked laugh at the pure eyes averted.

 

The paintbrush probes scalpel-like beneath

the skin delighting in entrails devoured

 

and the charred flavour of flaming hair

a dab of the branding iron the flaying knife

 

all the devious instruments for prising out pain

you paint with delectation. Only a priest-painter

 

clothed in the hair shirt of purity and self-

inflicted pain an artist with an aura of sanctity

 

could weigh in the balance

and find so many wanting.

 

Pity the censorious for theirs is the arid desert

of ash the blood-soaked sand of Golgotha.

gogyohka for bird twitter

For Frank Tassone’s weekly challenge.

Wind sighs among new leaves

stream babbles water words

sun draws gold from deep in the meadow

and the blue air sings

with the bustle of bird twitter