Tag: 5lines

blue gogyohka

brighter chicory2

 

there was so much blue today

the sky was full

and over-brimming

caught among the outspread petals

of meadow flowers

 

a rain of light

the sky poured

a molten prism

here gold

there the cooled distillation of space

 

drops

fan-petaled blue

dance in the soft morning light

blanch and shrink from the heat

and the fierce face of the sun

chicory bank

These days

 

It should be enough the sun

the languid whistling of the birds

heat rising from baked earth and green shimmer

 

enough to rise with the heat

on birdwings lifting languid and serene in the sun

from green earth

 

they should be green with birdsong

these hot days dusty

with harvest motes floating golden birdwings

 

there should be joy after rain shafts

slanting steely cold

from lowering skies

 

when we listened to the rattle of hail

the splash of torrents

and a wind raging from the east

 

it should be enough the sun

the unconscious beauty of the warbler’s song

the ripple of heat breeze and leaf hiss

 

but these days it is not enough

to lift the heavy wings

the flutter leaden with rain

and all the little sorrows

sing soft and low.

From dusk to morning

 

Deer are barking

across the setting sun

a world apart

 

through the long grass

snake glides

climbs the fig tree biblically

taking the slender boughway

over the hedge top

 

in the path

yellow feathers strewn

midnight feast

 

oriole flutes an elegy

for lost kindred

in the gold of morning

 

small corpses

cat-kill

laid by the path

an offering to the night fox

are gone by morning

 

Five X Five lines

 

The world turns blue and grey

and night falls dark

yet the grass grows beneath the rain

and the birds sing as sweet

as if the sun were shining.

 

Only we stumble

and miss our steps in the dance

fail to see the fledgling flutter

the leveret in the morning flowers

and wish to live forever.

 

How would it be

if instead of thinking to paint the past

in the colours of the slogans of today

we looked to the future

and made it a home for our newfound humanity?

 

Stars hares deer and fox

join in a web of life

spangled dewy bright

if only we could learn

not to tangle the flowering shoots.

 

Life is strung with tiny joys

a cat recovering her voice

a leveret chasing through the rain-drenched meadow

a child smiling because

and I hold all their singing colours in my hands.

 

Night lines

Niko_Pirosmani._A_Fox_in_a_Moon_Night._Oil_on_oilcloth._State_Art_Museum_of_Georgia,_Tbilisi,_Georgia

What do we dream

on nights of no moon

and the stars crowd

keeping their distance

and the morning comes too soon?

 

Bird songs link dusk to dawn

and on again to dusk

through all the lights and half-lights

the pastels and the livid reds and blues

with never a pause.

 

Do I dream with open eyes

or sleepwalk the pale-lit fields of night

listening to the trembling fear

that we spread about us

like ominous stormcloud skirts?

 

Earth sips cool mist

and the dew that falls heavy with summer

where we trace the tracks

left by the unseen folk

that pass in the night

 

with never a word for us

never a backwards glance

always hurrying onwards

away from our ministerings

as much as from our dreadful pursuit.