Earth ocean rolls

A poem begun entirely by the Oracle, then nudged along to an ending of my choosing.

 

Hearts dance to the greening,

the slow dance that never ends.

Day dawns damp, sowing spangles

to coax seeds set deep

in the dark of the earth ocean,

still in winter sleep dreaming,

but spring stirs, will roll from a light swell

to storm-roar of shooting and spreading,

unfolding and unfurling, climbing

skyward towards the unreachable sun.

Home is

This subject is obviously preying on my mind. The Oracle knows. She said it was okay to have a two line puente.

 

Home is where the heart is, always or never.

Look and you may find it through the mists of midday,

 

not in the dark dance of icy mornings, nor in

the salt smile of the ocean, a sop for fools

 

who see hearth fires in a cracked glass,

though ice, steel-cold, coats budding shoots.

 

For those who dream of tropic seas and the comfort of

cushioned wealth, when frost webs splinter the panes

 

~the signs are there in the clouds

and the rumbling of the earth~

 

Remember, she says, ice melts, glass breaks,

and desire is devoured by death.

 

Listen; a voice, a word lingers where fish dart

and wild dogs howl the moon—hope is sailing.

 

Only on a night like this, washed clean by ocean

winds, can we see the stars beyond the clouds,

 

fiery ghosts of the youth of the world, and where

the stars shine and when the midday mists clear, home.

Red Queen

A collaborative poem with the Oracle. I’m stuck in this corner of history for the moment.

 

Russet red hair she has,

head wreathed in scarlet flames

no rain can put out.

Beauty she has,

pale as moonlight,

old a thousand years,

yet bright as that summer in my mind’s eye,

the summer she met her king.

 

I dream of the red queen’s love,

in a forest lush and green

beneath purple hills.

She sleeps in shadows now,

since the sky ran red with blood,

but death cannot quench her fire

nor put out her light,

not while there are words

to trace her portrait and tongues to tell,

how the red rose vanquished the white.

Earth is dark

Because Merril used the nature set of magnets, I thought I ought to have a go too. Maybe get a more hopeful message. I used the same pattern, a line or two from each page of words. The result is is not too depressing.

 

Earth is dark.

Rain murmurs in the wild wind,

and winter listens to the wet-boughed world.

Frost falls at dawn light and glitters at dusk light,

water stilled in its cycle.

Night blooms like stone flowers;

no bird rustles to disturb the moon’s flight.

Deep in the shifting carpet of fallen leaves,

where rock hides and splits in the cold,

the spirits of seeds sing lullabies to dead things

and twist the debris of the year into tendrils of life.

Something broken

I went right to the last page of offered words and it didn’t get any better. The Oracle is weeping too.

 

I am dancing in the dark

no voices hear

in the heart of the night.

Something is broken

in the light or life itself,

the brilliance used up perhaps.

Wild fire haunts the sky

no longer limpid but full of smoke,

and the glowing eye

beats down with ferocious glare.

I listen for the faded voices, lost laughter,

catch only words tossed in the stream—

tree, star, home—

the morning melts in the heat,

clouds pass.

Blue as frost

A collaborative poem with the Oracle. Perseverance through to the last page of words often brings a hopeful ending.

cold

silver-furred

dogs my steps

 

light shivers

a dance

of broken glass

 

beneath this sky

that none can warm

no breath melt the ice

 

only fools

find joy

in wild mornings

 

broken things die

enfolded by clouds

and the night

 

yet they wake

blue as angels

in the soft vastness of home

Sky grass

Poem gleaned from my Saturday conversation with the Oracle.

sky scattered on the grass

a broken firmament

millions of bright fragments

colour of mornings and evenings

and in the sharp shadows

between each tall blade

nights full of stars