Growing

Bittersweet thoughts of how gaining an adult is losing a child.

Childish laughter echoes in the night,

It fills the morning with its music bright,

Paints a thousand hues in crystal light.

 

For a time we two walked hand in hand,

Two sets of prints in the mirror sand,

Tides swept them smooth, empty now the strand.

 

Memories cascade in golden streams,

Dance like dust motes in the sun’s bright beams,

Happiness is never what it seems.

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Where will we go when the darkness falls?

Where will we go when the darkness falls

And from green depths the ocean’s voice calls?

Are there safe places in city sprawls?

 

We could follow the swallow so swift

And hope for a wind, black clouds to lift,

But flight, narrow-winged, is not our gift.

 

Air and ocean are bound into one,

All are equal beneath the bright sun,

We’re left with our hearts, when all is done.

There is a place

This is a Skeltonic poem for the NaPoWriMo prompt.

There is a place,

a peaceful space,

where blackbirds run

in the sun

and river flows.

No one knows

where is goes,

the river slow,

when the stream,

silver gleam,

into the sea,

with blackbird glee,

rolls away.

I will stay,

watch starlings play,

if you will say,

you’ll sit with me,

forever keep me

company.

Fields of sunshine

Inspired by a photo I took the other day, and by the rhythm of fast dog-walking ( and fast-dog walking) this one is almost on prompt for NaPoWriMo. The form is one I like, all about threes, but I’m not sure what to call it besides Three Squared.

Sunshine fills the field with golden light,

April’s tender hues, a palette bright,

Memories, the dark of winter’s night.

 

All about, green buds burst, leaves uncurl,

Yellow banners, morning-blown unfurl,

Bathed, the grass in mist and tints of pearl.

 

On my tongue, the tang flows in the breeze,

Wild and windy taste of summer seas,

Childhood dreams shine in the salty lees.

 

Spring swans

Photo©Bob Jones

Swans there were in the sky, a skein of nine,

silent and white as driven snow,

a perfect arrowhead, pacific and pure,

pulsed with hot blood and smooth-feathered muscle.

One accord binds them on the paths of the air,

above the slow-flowing river, bound to its bed,

one accord, wing tip to wing tip, slip-stream rowing,

strongest in front, breaking the way.

Bonds as sure as any fraternity, buoy their passage,

surging on pure white power and gentle compassion.

Tonight there are waves in the wind

Tonight there are waves in the wind,

An ocean of salt-feathered wings,

As graceful as fish, silver-finned.

Tonight there are waves in the wind,

Grey gulls to the wild clouds are pinned,

While the tide as it flows inland sings—

Tonight there are waves in the wind,

As graceful as fish, silver-finned.

I walk upon withered light

 

No more moon climbs bright

into gentle night.

Cycle over,

the fall is deep—

I see frost

where flowers bloomed,

I walk upon withered light.

 

Beauty aches

in the shadows,

blue as the sea.

Crying in the wind,

time whispers,

Summer’s gone,

like love.

 

Some haunting lingers

in the air,

joy or sadness,

who can say?

Peace remembered

from a ghostly star?

Haibun for a home

This is where I was this afternoon. A tram ride from the centre of Bordeaux.

http://invisiblebordeaux.blogspot.fr/2013/08/le-corbusiers-cite-fruges-timelessly.html

I saw a house today with acacias shaded, bee-strung and scented. I saw a house built with care, with windows placed to catch the light and rooms just so, no more than we would need. I saw a house like a canvas by Mondrian, squares of colour, clear as spring water, dense as earth. I saw an elderly house, misunderstood in its youth, tired and flaking, acacia-scented and full of window light.

It’s quiet there, among the coloured cubes and the trees, and the air of hope after the Great War and before the Depression still lingers, changed now and surer of itself. We look at these pure lines, with no decoration and bourgeois fioritures, in the colours of the earth, the sea and the sky, without the distrustful, conservative eye of the worker. We feel no obligation to stick to our lowly station and lower our eyes. Cloud-white prevails, dappled by sunlight through waving branches, and the fluttering wings of birds.

I would like to take this house and strip away the years and the botched jobs, an old man’s last misery, and fill it with the pure light of the south. Perhaps I will.

 

Spring to summer light

flits bird-like through scented trees,

feels like coming home.

Into the gold I would go

Off NaPo prompt today, this one is inspired by watching a couple of peregrine falcons over the river bank this morning. An entry for the dverse open link night.

Photo©Stefan Berndtsson

Into the gold I would go, not the dark,

though my feet are trapped in the mist

that wells from the depths of the past,

heavy as sorrow and sluggish with grey tears.

Into the gold with the falcon I’d soar,

imperator that peers from unseen perch,

balanced on the buffeting wind,

and sees no mist, no remorse,

just the heat rising from trembling prey.

I would wade in the gold of happiness,

shake off the dead and dried kelp that clings,

look beneath stones and find bright stars,

sow pools of mirror-light in my wake.

Where the melting day star falls with weary grace

into the open arms of the sea,

between the diamond-speckled blue of space

and the rolling, roaring swell of the waves,

I will follow, falcon-winged and sleek,

bathed in the golden light of the sun

and the silver of the moon.

Light-flicker, mirror-shine

Poem written as a migraine starts to take hold.

Light flickers through windy leaves,

Heavy with the weight of gold and silver,

Glitter where the river streams,

Turbulent its course, ending never.

Spring briskness twists the new green,

Shooting through hard winter crust,

Deep earth and water shed their icy sheen,

Shifts the season, bellows with every thrust.

Mirror-shine too bright to look upon,

Water rolls too loud to hearken on,

Even the fussing blackbird’s still,

Frozen in the golden, silver chill.