Things we see or don’t

Running late. The medication is starting to work and I can see a bit clearer now. The Oracle gave me a cadralor. Nothing to do with anything.

• 

Things we see, or don’t

1.
In my forest there are roses,
the sun slips
between bird-strung boughs
and the rain in silver patters,
language of dreams.

2.
He brought me flowers,
gave me slabs of meat to cook,
his friends to tolerate,
loud and boorish. No one noticed
when I slept in the garden.

3.
I remember a pair of shoes, blue.
She never wore them, like the red dress,
not me, she said with a smile.
it stormed when she died.
She’d have liked that.

4.
There’s a picture of the north pole,
how it was, with the ice
and the long black shadow of a white bear.
All gone, but we prefer palm trees
and sun anyway, so no loss.

5.
A celebrity’s plastic face, souped-up sunsets,
Ferraris and Porsches, a selfie
taken with the moon in a space station,
none more beautiful than the daisy,
crushed beneath your tread, rising again, slowly.

To be, and not to be

I was finishing writing a cadralor poem this morning and it struck me that it’s the perfect form for the Oracle. Each stanza takes the words/theme from a different page of words and the Oracle slips in the message in the closing stanza. It’s a hypothesis anyway. This is what she just gave me.

To be, and not to be

1.
Rust, such a pretty colour.
Though it comes from ruin and decay,
creeps in the sordid places, acid-damp,
it runs the woods with the deer.

2.
You always said I was blue,
hair the colour of bilberry juice, honey-skinned.
I was a peach by any other name.
I never told you what that was.

3.
Day screams before it soars
into the world the moon has left bereft,
the raw cries of owls,
drunk with sunlight, fading.

4.
Crush these dried lavender flowers;
the smell will linger for centuries in the fabric
of gowns packed in a cedar chest,
as long as it is never opened.

5.
We wish for the rain to stop,
like we wish the bitter words could be unsaid,
the war never started, but the sea is still the sea,
and salt water will never run in this stream.

The urging of the storm

I opened the new Oracle and the first and only words to leap out at me were ‘storm’ and ‘urge’.

• 

Day breaks in gold
a mist of silver-green
and pale eggshell blue.

It breaks in cockcrow
the barking of a distant dog
woodpigeons.

Light spreads swells
sweeps the shadows beneath the trees
into the hedges

washes this world with colour
flower heads heavy with dew
the fresh scent of moonlight

but the dove-throat peace is fragile
a thread
gossamer drifting

to be caught and broken
by the storm struggling to be born
beneath each treed horizon.

The Gulf Streams away

The story gets more depressing every day and the Oracle doesn’t pull her punches. I’m posting this one to Earthweal where it might feel at home.

The Gulf Streams away

Sun trudges with heavy feet behind whitecap clouds
no fish swim on airy wings through this rain
that draggles feathers and spirits.

The girdle of the oceans will wrap us
in a cold embrace blowing bitter winter
to shrivel warm beating hearts unopened buds.

We say we worship beauty the face of nature
press hands together before the setting sun
a flock of silver birds and say this is the creator’s work.

Our song is raw and bloody the wounds weep
red-running the earth an open sewer
entrails ripped and steaming

but we pluck a flower coo at kittens
eat steak not someone’s baby
and consider ourselves compassionate.

We reward our affluence with an idyll
tropical island deserted beaches trek across
a country teeming with poverty

but we take home
such memories, such beautiful pictures.
We love our god-created planet.

Empty words
when the earth is screaming
and we are all dying.

Warbler singing in the key of purple

• 

The colour of this summer is purple,
of storm skies, bruised clouds
and the dark beneath forest boughs.

Only the brave sing
with their thin threads of voices,
gossamer drifting across an infinite emptiness.

Petals fall, torn untimely,
a sea of regret for the blue promise
of spring never fulfilled.

Less is not more;
there will never be enough flowers
in this meadow or birds in the hedge,

never enough light in the sky
to show the truth
to those whose gaze is a dark tunnel.

Music drifts brave and sweet,
a thin thread, tenuous, barely there at all,
but what does life offer more beautiful?

At the end of never

• 

At the end of never there is music
of the moon
playing in the shadows of rain and storm
in the tongue of sweet summer and winter whisper.

At the end of never light slips
fast as starfire
pure as the pink-petaled rose reflected in still water.

At the end there must be blue
and the spring rising of swallows’ wings
where dragonflied lakes glitter with the soaring sun.

And at the end of never is sleep
dreams perhaps of forest green
and moons slipping fast as starfire
into the cupped pink petals of a rose.

Peach pebbles

Even blood runs cool
in this veil of steel-grey rain,
the meadow grown so high
it can’t sustain the weight.

In this veil of steel-grey rain,
garden dreams lie rotting among the fallen peaches,
smoothed pebbles in the wind,

the meadow grown so high,
the tangles spread,
a net to catch the moon.

It can’t sustain the weight
of storm and night, and moon-silver flows
in torrents of peach pebbles, storm-washed.

Obverse and reverse

The brighter the sun the darker the shadows
night brings the dance of the stars and the hare
dawn silence is broken by the birds
and at noon the meadow swallows the molten sun.

Sleep is where dreams walk
colours glow brighter in memory
happiness is in lost moments.

Through this window the world turns
the business of living and dying
rolls implacably between the suns

while we trace our perverse route across the light
a swathe of darkness in the gold
and the blackened waste grows wider each day.

Silver linings

The Poet and Original word sets left me cold today. Switched to Nature, and got this from the first page.

Silver linings

Beneath the cover of blossom
berries grow round and red
fat as baby squirrels.

Beneath the rose the root
digs deep as secrets
into summer earth

and through the rain
the sun shines warming
the backs of the clouds.

Day swells

How honeyed is the light
in this garden of life

no fingers crush the fragile buds
no blood drips from feather to petal.

The sea is a ripple of stalks
waving in unseen currents
where swallow-ships skim
on narrow wings.

This day was sung by the moon
coaxed by the sun
and cradled in the arms
of root-tangle
and the pulse of the earth.