Ce soir de nuages

 

Ce soir de nuages,

qui cachent des seaux

d’eaux et de grêlons,

et cette lune a moitié mangée,

rongée par l’espace,

je te cherche dans les ombres mouvants,

argentés et sombres,

et j’écoute le vent,

trie les sons sauvages

pour un note de flute argenté,

qui serait ton dernier mot,

que le flot emporte,

la houle de nuit encre,

le sifflet du dernier train.

 

This night of cloud

that hides pails of rain

buckets of hail

and a half-eaten moon

balloon nibbled by space,

I look for you in the moving shadows

silvery sallows,

and I listen to the wind,

unwind the wild sounds

for a silvery flute note—

your final word floats

snatched by the tide,

the flood of night-ink,

that drinks up

the whistle of the last train.

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Microfiction: Gone

For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers.

PHOTO PROMPT Sarah Potter

 

It would have been a perfect place to work, looking out into the garden, windows open to the breeze and the swaying branches of overhanging trees. The wisteria perfumed it in spring, roses in summer. You put my desk where the light fell in dapples and waited for me to charm the words into stories. It would have been perfect. But you went away, and left your touch in the soft grain of the wood, your face framed in the fluttering leaves, your voice in the breeze. Perhaps another could have borne it. Not I.

Microfiction: Lost in space

For Sacha Black’s flash fiction challenge, 52 words on the theme: the distance between.

Nothing left to say, our hands lie still on the white tablecloth in the candlelight, where once fingers would have entwined, inextricable as tree roots. Now in the silence of no more words, hands lie idle, our fingers leaving a white space between your warmth and mine, the distance between the stars.

 

Short sharp sorrow

Trying to get the sadness out. A haiku, a short poem, and a tanka.

Grief pangs twist the heart
Wring tears from vague sentiment
A sea to drown in.

A child is dead
And another and another
All someone’s children
All my children
So many parents’ tears
Pour
A flood of heart’s blood
To quench the fires of hatred
But ideals do not listen
Fanatics need guns
Not children.

I did not know you
never held your hand in mine
or called out your name
but I grieve for your absence
the world is a darker place.