A toad sits

Night flies on out-flung turquoise wings

folding feathers of fucshia and the taste

of pressed gold into cloud shapes and the

roaring of the poplars in the wind.

 

Grass shadow stretches earthwards and

upwards grey as dusky earth and the colour

of the toad waiting for the light music to fade

and the tranquil dark sea to rise and fall.

 

Cool seeps from well and water, earth turns

slow and stately as moonbeams, and life walks

on slender bufonid legs into the leaf-rustle

hush of the star-dimpled night ocean.

Second colour

A haibun for the dverse frustration/heartbreak prompt.

When the summer drawls to a close, in leaf-turn and mellow light of evening, the swallows mass. Blackberries are finishing, I pick the figs the birds have left. Rose hip and hawthorn red fire the hedge, where birds flutter-flash and unseen things crack and rustle. Red stained fingers I can wash, but not this sound that rattles in the brain. All this lazy fruitfulness, replete and summer-full is scattered in the red staccato as the killing season starts

red is autumn

colour too of winter dearth

these last mild days

peppered with dog and gun

cold is not hardship enough

Light

The last dverse prompt I used was to create a poem using the same techniques as the Impressionist painters. I had another think about the idea and wrote this.

Light is all,

light and its shadow,

sun and moon and the good green earth.

This gesture, that posture,

esquisse—

her hand, his mouth, a blowing poppy,

languid or lascivious,

through a prism of rainbows.

Paint the words in the scent of roses,

and breathe it in the waters of reflected stars.

Touch me with the pastel shades of morning,

bathe me in the fiery clouds of dusk.