Sevenling: Summer fruit

A second quadrille/sevenling for dverse because blackberrying is so full of images.

 

Deep purple blackberries

midnight blue sloes

bramble among bright green figs syrup-heavy by the lane.

 

Sun bakes

stifling the thrush’s song, the orioles fluting questions

but the fruit swells and oozes with sweetness.

 

Windfalls gathered by fox and marten spread their sticky evidence—wasp-feast

 

 

Blackberrying

For the dverse prompt. The first blackberries are ripe but it’s too hot to pick them yet.

 

Amid the tangled,

sharp-spined jungle

of winding, whip-snaked brambles,

briar,

razor wire

and the bright red welts of torn flesh

are the berries,

sloe-black and gleaming,

biggest, blackest

always out of reach,

where spiked tendrils arc—

hark, juice drips,

sweet as the warbler’s song.

 

 

Blue

A second quadrille for the dverse prompt. Blue is a pretty enormous subject!

 

Pale as winter mornings

ice beneath a clear sky

plumbago blooms

a newborn’s romper

 

intense as gentian flowers

flags waving on the fourteenth of July

 

deep as Mediterranean waters

 

and indigo dark as the still tropical night

just after sunset

and your goodbye—blue

Forget-me-nots

For the dverse prompt.

 

Spring gone in storms and dull days

now baked dry and petals fallen,

hay cut and baled, harvest’s in,

 

crickets strum chords

of trembling heat, yet

beneath the lazy wafting of limp leaves,

 

in a sun-dapple of rose-shade

peep spring-bright eyes

of forget-me-not blue.

Storm comes

A serpent’s tail quadrille for dverse.

 

Storm comes

drums on the roof

reproof —did we expect soft summer rain?

Trains pass distant rumble

tumble of hail

wail of the horn

borne on wind roaring

soaring kites sail past

last light drowning, cloud

shrouds waking the night—

light of star swarm.

Time

 

Time like sea sand slips

though you close your fingers

it streams silent as stars

into the dark of space

the deep of the ocean

where you can see memories fading

pearls sinking into the murk

their tender glow gone

when the mud settles.

At close of day

For the dverse quadrille prompt.

At close of day the light falls thicker,

golden syrup honey dew,

and shadows deepen in the hedges,

woodland, maple, oak and yew.

Remember when brash jingle- jangle

rattled every summer night?

The notes of blackbirds’ singing now

fill with wild beauty each twilight.

Earth-magic

A quadrille for the dverse prompt.

 

Harrowing the news

these days of spring,

when fear of stepping into the snare

dogs our steps,

and every face is the face of an enemy.

Catch the trailing silver thread,

moon and sun-cast,

revel in bonds of earth-magic,

sudden tree-greening

and fireworked bud-burst.

Deepest darkest night

 

From the deepest darkest night,

when the winter-world’s asleep,

we wake with longing for the light,

rise of sap, water-creep,

watch the budburst on the bough,

listen to the west wind sough,

with feathered folk, folk of fur

waiting for the spring to stir.

 

For the dverse prompt.

Barnacles

For the dverse prompt. This was a hard one. I got stuck on Peelers and it took a while to send them back to barracks.

 

How do we make it like it was,

before the layered dim-dull years

of struggling at the edge of forbearance

stifled the joy?

Is there a tool you can buy

to peel them away,

the encrusted disappointments,

like careening barnacles

from an old hull?