Sevenlings: chicory among other things

Morning warbles

beneath soft grey clouds

gentle as pigeons.

 

Morning oriole whistles

she squawks back

domestic banter.

 

Cool morning bustles before sky-gong sounds brazen-hot.

 

The camera is not a pair of eyes

one eye perhaps and selective

it sees a single plane not the depth

 

I see a froth of white lace on a green sea

pools of sunlight in the troughs between waves

reflections of sky through broken cloud

 

becalmed in a child’s caught breath of wonderment.

 

Distant chaffinches converse,

a buzzard wails, ignored,

wood pigeons flutter-call among the leaves,

 

all soft and low,

a murmur, flowing background, like streamwater,

a moving hush, all listening­—

 

a warbler is singing.

 

Bluer than blue eyes

scraps of sky perhaps

morning chicory before the sun

 

Waiting for the heat

watching the sky

but then the blue will fade and close

 

Time flows a river each moment perfect.

From dusk to morning

 

Deer are barking

across the setting sun

a world apart

 

through the long grass

snake glides

climbs the fig tree biblically

taking the slender boughway

over the hedge top

 

in the path

yellow feathers strewn

midnight feast

 

oriole flutes an elegy

for lost kindred

in the gold of morning

 

small corpses

cat-kill

laid by the path

an offering to the night fox

are gone by morning

 

Conundrums

 

in the dry heat

among smooth shiny things

the sun picks out beacons

sometimes diamonds

sometimes a hay stalk

 

sometimes a hay stalk

shiny smooth

drying in the heat

flashes like a diamond beacon

because the sun

 

because the sun

a broken stalk of fescue

shiny smooth

flashes diamond bright

sometimes

 

sometimes

in the dry heat

diamonds shine

smooth as hay stalks

caught by the sun

 

caught by the sun

sometimes

we see hay stalks

where there are only diamonds

flashing

Gogyohka for a midsummer pause

Hay lies waiting

beneath the sun beating

and an oriole is fluting

his endless questions

that have no answer

 

bees swarm loud

in the hot silence

heavy as honey

sweet as syrup

and the brazen blue throbs

 

with a brazen beat

cicada hiss sssss

among limp leaves

while water runs slower

dying and drying as its bed shrinks

 

spring is life in movement

floods and rising green shoots

now we hold hot breath

thinking of the crisping of leaves

and the first cold shadows.

Haiku for the longest day

For Frank Tassone’s summer solstice prompt.

the longest day

a day for mowing cutting

the year in half

 

all the golden stalks

the meadow

a battlefield

 

the gyre narrows

hawk objective probes beneath

the fallen grass

 

how did they know

before the engine’s rattle

that death was coming?

 

feather swarm glides

in untouching pattern

through the blue

Evening drifts

For the dverse prompt.

 

Sinking sun sweeps

with broad brush

swallows

 

dip drinking deep

of rain-washed air

golden motes

 

fly gnat-winged

into dusty dusk

of gilded light

 

night brings wings

soft silent

owl-flutter

 

I watch the first star wake

rocked in the cobalt cradle

of the cosmos.

Tidings

storm again the grey

so familiar a cover

to the rain-lashed world

 

and the dimming

of the light

before the night

 

no dusk

of soft golden

fading

 

drumroll and lights

yet we pull the shutters closed

on the spectacle

 

no moon rides

no stars glow beneath the waves

of such heavy seas

5 line poems for a world without meaning

 

it’s dark even when the sun

breaks through and the rain

eases into fierce glitter

shadows hang heavy

as incurable sorrow

 

no more shouting in my face

from your moral high ground

using violence and intimidation

to denounce violence and discrimination

show not tell

 

death and decay

blind anger and violence grow

where understanding should flower

everyone shouts

no one listens

 

eye for an eye

a head burst by paving stone

for a head burst by baton charge

blood is blood is blood

talk don’t pray

 

I am me and no one else

I have no millions of sisters

my acts are mine and my thoughts

and I will be judged

for myself alone

 

Gogyohka sequence for damselflies

Frank Tassone was kind enough to choose a poem of mine to feature as an example of the gogyohka form for the dverse prompt this evening. Thank you, Frank. Here are three more.

 

silver the pool

pewter the sky

and in the golden dust of bedstraw

the damsels fly

on wings colour of sunsets

 

heat and damselflies hover

hanging

light as sunbeams among the alders

water-dipping in the dark cool of tree shadow

jewels

 

sun and water and deep tree shade

the stray ray that falls

the flash like coloured lightning

of lace wings dipped in sapphire

kingfisher insect sips the light

Bird skirmishing

 

robin tweets his warning cry

fiery fierce

from his honeysuckle bush

none shall enter

this private tangle

 

egrets in the meadow

pause in their insect search

then resume unconcerned

the bullets

were for someone else

 

crows mob the buzzard

black voices hoarse with hatred

but when the red kites arrive

slow in tight formation

no one moves