Well water

For the dverse prompt. I wrote a first poem, and it was too long so I wrote another. The first poem below is the quadrille, the second is same theme but just a poem.

 

I dip a bucket fill it full

Of dancing, silver mirror water,

Ask the silent fairy’s daughter

For a seeing, bright or dull.

 

In the mirror-silver deep,

I see my love upon the field,

Lying on his broken shield,

Willow, clouds and blackbirds weep.

 

*

 

I dip a bucket in the well

And fill it full of silver water.

On my tongue are rowan berries,

Sailing clouds a story tell

 

Of wishes granted, curse stones cast,

Of mad hares leaping in the meadow.

Yet are these clouds of future dreaming,

Or are they clouds of dreaming past?

#Three line tales: Stars

For Sonya’s Three Line Tales prompt.

 

While we fix our eyes on instant fun (buy it, own it, do it)

and search for vacuity to fill our vacuum (see nothing, learn nothing, be nothing)

the rest of creation is looking at the stars.

Blue star-fire

The Oracle gave me two poems today. Though I used two different word sets, the words and images are similar. I get the message.

It brings wild colour to the morning

this bird-joy and laughter,

blue fire to the waking sky.

As some see stars in the dark

not ghosts, so our unclouded words

open the dance of the vastness of eternity

in a breath of night magic.

 

Ask and you will receive

or not,

but take the broken blue

from these old stars

and make the magic happen;

fly into the fire and sing.

 

 

Haibun for nature’s magic

Well, I couldn’t resist. Another haibun for the dverse magical nature prompt. The five line verse is a gogyohka.

Life is heavy these days. Worries settle like indigestion in the silence of the night, rattling chains like Marley’s ghost and chasing sleep. The remedy, come morning, is to walk around the land, along the north path where the vines face south, down the west side where dog roses perfume the air, beneath the plum trees and the fig, to follow the stream east in the shade of poplar and oak, to listen to all that rustles and sings, barks and chatters, and let the peaceful words of running water sooth the night away.

stream babble-music plays

birds among the leaves trill unseen

a tangle of scents

furtive scuttle-rustle

grass stalks bend—wild secrets

Silvering

 

after the rain the moon

like sand settling

silver

in animal pelts

half-shadows

half grainy movement.

I sift the grains

the crosshatched trees

for the magical hare

in the pooled darkness

of these shifting seas

but the night closes

after the rain

full of moon-wash

silvering

my elusive wilderness.

Fire magic

For the dverse prompt. An ordinary branch etheree.

 

In the damp grass, among the fallen leaves,

a dead branch lies, fallen in some gale,

lichen green, speckled with fungus,

home to hundreds, an insect

metropolis. Borne home,

laid in state in the

grate, a funeral

pyre will blaze—

orange

blooms.

All this magic

There is just so much box packing that the human spirit can tolerate before it atrophies. Taking a very short break to reply to the dverse prompt this evening.

 

That look that has lasted so many years,

a flame that has flickered but always flared again,

fire-bright, deeper than desire

and the well of wishes where the moon swims;

water-borne with otter grace,

the torrent of a child’s first melancholy wail,

delicate swish-tailed fish become hefty bawling flesh;

a dream plucked from a shared vision,

two hands that reached into the tingling darkness

of a distant night and found the same star;

fields and trees, a breeze from the south,

red fox-flash and the silent setting of the sun.

All this magic fallen into my cupped hands

to tip into your keeping,

yours, mine, forever.