Having faith

For dverse, another excuse to listen to the new Abba songs.

They said they were stuck in a groove
predictable, kitsch,

those times were past,
like youth, a place of memories.

They said they’d never have it in them,
but they showed us we remain

the children we once were,
and our music never dies

Where skylark trills

For the dverse prompt.

• 

Where skylark trills,

beneath the grass, on bare stone hills,
in sky that soars on swallows’ wings,
there is a beating heart that sings.

Where blackbird sings, the hedges fills,
the stream’s bright source in silver springs,
earth’s pulse, her beating heart still sings.

Streaming

Light ribbon
ancient streams
of lost-star memories.

Down the pane
rain streams—beyond
the world’s a water-blur.

Beneath the poplars
the only sound
stream-babble

They tumble-stream the words
a river flowing
ni queue ni tête

After the fête
littered happiness lies
in streamered joy.

For the dverse prompt.

Throwing darts in lovers’ eyes

Once there were rainbows seagulls
and storm clouds that strung up the sky
once we would live like the wind
and we’d never say die
now there is darkness
and colour has seeped into night—
howl with the moon
the juke’s thin and white.

I didn’t think of this one until this afternoon. In response to the dverse prompt, a quadrille using the word juke.

The lane

we loved that wound about the hill is still,
though we have gone and left the silent house,
the woods and hedges left untended, till
the quiet ones return, the hare and mouse,
reclaim their night land home. I hope they will.

• 

A quadrille for the dverse prompt.

Was seed

now spreads broad-leafed branches,

unfolds, scented,
in a complex origami
of curl-petaled bloom,

gallops the hillside,
a russet-red leaper,

pads the night paths,
a russet-tailed chancer,

and you,
milky-soft, pink and unfocused,
learning by the moment,
gallop-growing, unfurling beauty,

were once a microscopic
seed.

• 

A quadrille for EJ and the dverse prompt.

Gone the wind

A silence
unnatural
spills soaks up the sound
of soughing trees.

Where did the wind go with its ranting
threads of voice wolf-cried ululations
roaring chimneys keyhole-whistles?

Raced over the hill and far away

deafening-quiet
until a distant dog bells
echoing the long goodbye.

Look-out

For the dverse prompt.

Sun sinks through broken and bruised
purple cloud, pink flushed, and the grey
of day flames in riots of fierce light.

Water rises through grass roots,
trees bow in wind’s embrace,
yet perched crow’s-nest high,
swaying with the storm’s wings,
a thrush still sings.

Truth

For the dverse prompt.

Is this the way?

So many waving arms and shouting faces,
so many truths where one would be enough.

I walk the hard path, slip-shod, where eagles fly,
see the painted sky, the running deer,
the tawdry remnants fit only for a magpie’s nest.

Fishmarket

To continue the fishy theme, a quadrille for the dverse prompt.

Fishmarket

a large small family to feed
and an ocean of fish

then

we would buy orphie with green bones
rouget grondin with its duck-beaked snout
and limande
dab
flat fish round as a serving dish
generous enough for all

then

those days are gone.