Where waves

My poems didn’t make the Ekphrastic cut again. You can read the ones that did here.

This is one of the poems I submitted for the Henry Ossawa Tanner challenge.

Where waves rise to meet storm clouds,

the lowering sky drops among black rocks,

and between is the place where life is forged.

 

Between the hammer and the anvil,

the red hot stuff is quenched and shaped

where waves rise to meet storm clouds

 

and last year’s promises are cast on the wind

with the broken packaging of dreams.

The lowering sky drops among black rocks

 

the complacency of sleek health and wealth,

yet here on the edge, raw and real, in the crucible of cold stars,

between light and dark, is where life is forged.

There’s a crack in the sky

I didn’t do the dverse quadrille yesterday but the word to use was ‘crack’ which inspired this cascade poem.

 

There’s a crack in the sky where the rain pours through

With the hiss of cooling dragon breath,

And cracks in the earth drink the serpent’s tears.

 

Will we say when the floods wash a world away

And Venice rocks beneath cruise ships’ waves,

There’s a crack in the sky where the rain pours through?

 

When carcasses rot in the desert drought

Some sip drinks in the shade while sprinklers play

With the hiss of cooling dragon breath,

 

And close their eyes as life trickles away,

Smug and righteous and hand on heart,

While cracks in the earth drink the serpent’s tears.

Poem in Nightingale & Sparrow

Thank you to Juliette Sebock for including my poem A blinding in the nevermore issue.

You can read the whole magazine here

 

Sweep down to the sea

A cascade poem for the OctPoWriMo prompt. The painting looks like the Cliffs of Moher, and the title refers to the Mountains of Mourne. Take your pick, both are magnificent.

Mountains that run down to the sea

Beneath a sky of changing cloud

The mountains that my ghosts have trod.

 

In purple light and winter snow

Memories in this dark soil of

Mountains that run down to the sea.

 

Black cliffs that soar white-strung with gulls

Etch in the bones a world now lost

Beneath a sky of changing cloud.

 

If ever I could ravel up

Time I’d return to walk again

The mountains that my ghosts have trod.

In awe

Second cascade of the day for the dverse majestic prompt.

Photo©Airwolfhound

Beneath the mountain, a round pebble I,

Cloud-mountains build their vastness overhead;

The falcon stoops, my land-locked heart takes flight.

 

The keystone of a soaring arch-ribbed vault

Looks down on me with pure and cold disdain;

Beneath the mountain, a round pebble I.

 

The darting swallow-specks that fill the sky

Fly where I cannot go, that blue realm where

Cloud-mountains build their vastness overhead.

 

Such grandeur mocks our proudest works, their vain

Pale imitation fails to move, yet when

The falcon stoops, my land-locked heart takes flight.

When the ocean fills with darkness

This is the third of the poems I wrote for the Ekphrastic challenge using this painting by Dale Patterson.

When the ocean fills with darkness, fish will fly

Into the murky sky on silver wings;

In their tender mouths the seeds of perhaps.

 

The spring is silent now, no birds to sing,

All fallen, and the deer have gone, though mockers said,

When the ocean fills with darkness fish will fly.

 

So many flew, their souvenirs all wrapped in gossamer

But in the ports no welcome banners waved, and back they fell

Into the murky sky, on silver wings.

 

These children, my children, may still look up and see

The dreams go flying by and take up the fading cry

In their tender mouths—the seeds of perhaps.

This light, this life

 

This light that shines is not for me to keep,

Nor is the rain that falls, the running stream,

I hear imprisoned voices in the night.

 

No bird is mine to pluck down from its flight,

I have no right to bend life to my scheme,

This light that shines is not for me to keep.

 

The wind that blows in from the ocean deep,

Blows free and wild not chained in fetters bright,

Nor is the rain that falls, the running stream.

 

All this I know, yet often in my sleep,

The wind, the stream, weave through my restless dream,

I hear imprisoned voices in the night.