Dance away

Dance away the night fears

and the day fears

and the sunless thoughts

that crowd out sleep and joy.

Listen to the wind lulling blackbirds in the hedge

Look up at the stars

lighting the wild leaping of the hare

know that this fragile, intangible beauty

is the gossamer-weave

of life.

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In the reaches of the night

Something calls in the reaches of the night, where stars

wash back and forth, caught in the swell of the sky.

 

Its wordless words are saying that this place between

hoof, paw and the netted stars, that stirs in flaring nostrils

 

and tastes of the night, is love and anguish at its loss, is

birth and death and all of life between, muscles sliding

 

beneath hide and feathered flight. It says, listen to life

calling, hear its song in the snailshell of the ear, feel it

 

growing deep in the bones. Keep it close, let it not be

snatched away snuffed out in blood and tears,

 

but carry it always to sing, loud-throated as the blackbird,

into the teeth of death and the last silence.

Microfiction: Destiny

Sorry to take a cynical view of this photo, but that’s life, for some.

photo by Melanie Dretvic via Unsplash

 

‘When I’m too big for my pony, Daddy’s going to sell her and buy me a real horse, an old, used one like you, that I can practice on until I get good, then he’ll buy me a better one.’

‘And when you get a better one, little girl, what will happen to me?’

The little girl shrugged and said, ‘You’ll go to the knackers, I suppose, where all old horses go.’

Yet the dark

 

All this growing and greening

spreading from root to stem

to flower

petals falling leaves unfurling

drawn sunwards

and yet the dark mud-stirred waters

still lap beneath the banks

shrouded in dead wood

ivy-festooned

where fungus grows.

Tanka Tuesday

For Colleen Chesebro’s weekly poetry challenge, not using the words, Ambition and Change.

Vines strive to reach where

light falls on green leaf, bathing

life in layers of gold.

Beneath my feet, pungent drifts

of decay—mortality.

Life pulse

This poem is the threading together of several small poems that all seemed to lead in the same direction.

Life throbs in ocean currents,

the rhythmic beat of rain in the rushes,

the booming song of the whale

and the tremulous heartbeat of a bird.

 

It coils and twists,

intricate as a snail shell,

filled with sand and diamonds and stars,

a capharnaum of treasures

and barbed ambiguities,

 

of things that drive us apart,

roses plucked from the tree,

a caged bird weeping,

contrary winds filling unruly sails,

 

and things that hold us together,

threads of sunlight,

tangles of roses,

strings that net the stars,

and the merest touch of your hand.

 

In the coiled nacre of our shell,

where night is bright as pearl

and day dim and cool as the ocean,

where stars fall and fish leap in the sun,

there is no end to me,

no beginning to you.

 

 

Sometimes

in the night,

to the beat of a double pulse,

I feel my thoughts slipping,

sand through fingers,

from me to you,

your lips,

my words—

oneness.

Star dance

The Daily Post prompt is: radiate.

From the cracks in the sky,

light radiates,

a web of star points,

keyholes to eternity.

Come the day,

suffused with pastels and petals,

I see the starlight in water glitter,

dancing the same dance

as in my childhood summers,

leading the way,

step by precious step,

into the star dance

of the last long night.

FFfAW: The fox’s tale

I saw this photo prompt on Lynn Love’s blog and a story immediately sprang to mind. If you too feel inspired, here’s the link to the Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers prompt.

The photo is courtesy of Tim Livingston (the Forester Artist)

A long time it’s been here, nights and nights and more nights. Still the smell hangs in the air like death. Mice come here now and birds. Mice and birds don’t know much, don’t smell death. Not like us. Us knows.

Men comed here over and over in the thing, comed stomping with death in their hands. Us would run and hide. Birds didn’t. Birds is stupid, don’t know to hide. Us sawed what happened to birds. Then one time, earth opened and breathed, enough. Us heard. Men didn’t. Earth opened and men’s thing tumbled inside. They left it there, caught in earth’s jaws. Us waited and waited nights and nights and more nights. But the thing was dead.

Mice come here now and birds. Mice and birds don’t remember anything. Us remembers. Us stays away. Except when us is hungry and us remembers scampering stupid mice. Quick snap snap snap. Blood and tiny squeals. Then us runs away back to the safe earth.

A long time it’s been here. Still it smells of death.

 

How long will the clouds?

This cascade poem is inspired by the photograph taken from the train just before La Réole on the Garonne.

How long will clouds drift over in glory

The river, placid in afternoon light,

When the world has turned into darkest night?

 

Reach up to the burnished blue of the sky,

Touch the wind for its breath will soon sharpen,

How long will clouds drift over in glory?

 

Here in this moment of peace and still beauty

Is where I would live, where golden light falls,

The river placid in afternoon light.

 

All things will end, as geese leave the northlands,

Leave, so will we, but the dream will remain,

When the world has turned into darkest night.

Tanka: The dead never die

Painting ©Gogo 1968

The dead never die,

they murmur deep in the bone,

coursing in the blood,

touching the grass, the green hills,

with their immortal fingers.