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?

Well water

For the dverse prompt. I wrote a first poem, and it was too long so I wrote another. The first poem below is the quadrille, the second is same theme but just a poem.

 

I dip a bucket fill it full

Of dancing, silver mirror water,

Ask the silent fairy’s daughter

For a seeing, bright or dull.

 

In the mirror-silver deep,

I see my love upon the field,

Lying on his broken shield,

Willow, clouds and blackbirds weep.

 

*

 

I dip a bucket in the well

And fill it full of silver water.

On my tongue are rowan berries,

Sailing clouds a story tell

 

Of wishes granted, curse stones cast,

Of mad hares leaping in the meadow.

Yet are these clouds of future dreaming,

Or are they clouds of dreaming past?

Wild

An off the cuff rhyming quadrille for the dverse prompt.

 

Wild is the wind and water white

and gusty stars on a windy night

and the fire that roars in the mountain’s maw

and claws unsheathed of a wildcat’s paw.

I left my heart in that wilderness,

in your open palms filled with tenderness.

Roar

A quadrille for the dverse prompt.

 

Sometimes

we look into the depths of a pool

see fish tail-flicking,

zig-zagging among weeds

bright shards of starlight

cast into the night water

longing for home.

 

Sometimes

when the water is murky dark

bubbling up from the core

we hear the earth roar.