There is no cliff

For the Secret Keeper’s five word writing prompt.

ROCK | JOINT | INNER | SIGHT | SAIL

 

There is no cliff

but I feel the wind roar from the sea

and the cry of the gulls.

There is no ship

but I watch the sail

until it is lost to sight.

There is no storm

but from beneath the waves

I hear the grinding teeth of rocks.

I stand at the hinge of today and tomorrow

the past irretrievable

and all my hopes sailing with you

beyond the horizon

tucked inside an inner pocket

where you will possibly never look.

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Red leaf

For the Secret Keeper’s five word prompt.

LEAF | HOME | ALTER | LIGHT | FRONT

 

A red leaf drifts home

in the changing light

from day to night,

and peace and happiness slump

like weary faces,

letting the façade slip.

 

The night will be cold,

the winter long,

and who knows if the spring

will remember to return.

 

 

 

Beauty blind

A tritina for the Secret Keeper’s weekly five word prompt.

DANCE | INNER | BREAK | HUE | LOST

Daybreak colours, hard to place

When beauty springs in every hue

Yet fails to move hearts with its dance.

 

Leaf fall, bird flight bright colours dance;

Before the inner eye takes place

A pageant dressed in every hue.

 

I’d take a palette of each hue

And paint the feathers of the dance,

But who would see in this lost place?

 

Dead is the place where beauty’s hue is a forgotten dance.

Oscuri

Seems like chiaroscuro is the word for today. I might give the prompt another go when I get nightmares out of my head and that word.

This is for the Secret Keeper’s five word prompt.

CHARCOAL | SHADE | PALE | WAKE | LUCID

 

 

In charcoal shade I wake,

the chiaroscuro of twilight,

dog-wolf snapping at my heels.

Ceiling beams lower,

ribbed clouds

or the rollicking innards of a ship,

too dark yet to see the water dripping.

I dreamt of dark men with no faces,

marching down an unlit hall,

narrow as their squared shoulders

and only a boltless door between.

Pale, wintry frost-light

creeps over the cold sill,

and returning lucidity tells me,

the men are merely waiting

for the dusk.

The warm world trembles

A triolet for the Secret Keeper’s five word prompt.

TREMBLE | HIT | DESIRE | ALTER | DEPTH |

 

The warm world trembles in this winter cold,

The depths of darkness hold all in its grip

And change green shoots to black twigs stark and bold.

The warm world trembles; in this winter cold

Strike ice arrows, leaves in furred frost enfold.

Desire shrinks, we hang onto the lip

Of trembling world, while in this winter cold

The depths of darkness hold all in its grip.

River runs

An etheree for the Secret Keeper’s five word challenge.

BED | FLARE | WAVES | GAIN | SEEK

 

Winter stream runs cold, leaf-littered and bright

with sun-glitter. Rippled and dimpled,

rain-swollen, it seeks the river,

rolls to the wave-haired mother

in a water-carved bed,

cradled by tree roots.

All life runs home

to the arms

of the

sea.

All is connected

A nonet for the Secret Keeper’s five word challenge.

LIVE | KNEEL | PLAN | EGO | LINK

 

All is connected in the vast plan

that turns the wheel of the stars locked

on its dark eternal course. Nights

I kneel beneath the weight

of so much grandeur

while our lives creep

across the

palm of

space.

 

Floundering

An etheree for the Secret Keeper’s five word prompt.

LATE | STORM | FRAME | STRIKE | WRAP

 

There was a storm late last night wind wrapped clawed

fingers round dead wood broke branches prised

stricken shutters loose and rattled

window frames the bats in the

attic fluttered in cat

fear they lost the north

like us floundered

danger lights

blinking

blind.

The frozen last leaf falls

A serpent’s tail poem for the Secret Keeper’s five word prompt.

RANT | BOW | SURGE | PAGE | SPIN

 

Bawls the wind among the last leaves,

cleaves boughs—

bow poplar, bend willow,

snow will come soon,

moon says, beaming.

Teeming life in river slows,

flows to a different winter song,

longer than the spring leaping.

Creeping cold cracks bones,

hones sheer to the oozing marrow—

sparrow death so brittle and feather light.

Night spreads a sheet of spun frost;

lost summer wanders with a grey taste,

wasted brightness of petals

settles, but buds swell in repose,

frozen last leaf falls.

Bird dance

Another poem inspired by the Secret Keeper’s five word prompt.

RAP | STONE | MARK | BAR | GROUND

 

 

Woodpecker insect-raps

dead wood tapping.

Turnstone turns pebble stones

where eelworms pile their castles

in the sand.

Ground, sky,

tidal sand ripples

are marked with bird stripes

and prickle-toed prints,

and between the trees

with wing bars blazing.