Of time, tides and life’s eternal circle

A tritina for the Secret Keeper’s weekly writing challenge. This week’s words are:

CHANGE | BOND | SHIFT | CIRCLE | KNOW

 

The tides will ebb and flow, the stars will circle,

The sands will shift, the mirror show you clouds,

And all you thought you knew is changed or lost.

 

There was a bond between us, now it’s lost,

Time for love and parting comes full circle,

Where once was sun and skylarks, only clouds.

 

Yet up above, the stars wheel, though the clouds

Obscure the sense of wonder we have lost,

Of time, tides and life’s eternal circle.

 

Scudding clouds, stars lost in the night, love too spins its circle.

 

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Imprint of the stars

Jilly’s days of unreason quote has produced a tritina.

 

What beauty in this the darkest music
over which you can hear the lightest music of human
behavior, the tender connection between men and galaxies.

from Warbler / Dead Man’s Float  

~ Jim Harrison

Once we had the imprint of the stars

In blood and flesh, the tingling of their light,

Remembered through the trail of years, their beauty.

 

Nightdark was a place of awe and beauty,

Expectant hush, the sky bespecked with stars—

They’d chase the shadows from our space with light.

 

The link is broken to that primal light,

Embrace of all that sparks of truth and beauty,

Lost, the path that wanders through the stars.

 

I’d touch the stars, their searing light, catch beauty in my hand.

Moon-feathered song

A tritina for a wonderful day!

 

On the right side of the moon the darkness falls,

the left, a goddess smile of echoed light

born on wings of owl and fluted song.

 

Starlight glitters, night leaves, while the song

of brown birds charms, whatever else befalls

this world of feathers soft and silver light.

 

Morning fills the sky with golden light,

sunrise whispers silver streams of song,

winding twisted tresses where it falls.

 

Feathered moon falls, light and gentle as a whispered song.

Listen to the moonlight

For the dverse open link night I have written a tritina to banish Sylvia and all her Plaths. It’s a form I enjoy, maybe because it lends itself to wandering into the not quite sensible.

 

It fills the air this evening, listen

to beating waves upon the shore, ocean

sings a rippling hissing water song

 

while in the woods the silver birdsong

trills—a nightingale—and foxes listen

to silent moonlight bright as the ocean.

 

Dreams bud like galloping waves on the ocean

bearing their blossoms a dark green song

you can hear it on spring nights, if only you listen.

 

Listen to the ocean’s song it ripples in bird throats.

Place of moonlit fishes

A tritina for the Secret Keeper’s weekly writing challenge.

The words:

WRITE | NEVER | PLACE | SHOCK | MARK

 

I could never write my heart in that cold place,

Knocks have left their mark, scarred like the ocean,

Torn the scraps of paper, food for fishes.

 

In dreams I swam and danced with silver fishes,

A golden garden grew, a nest, my place,

But waking tossed me on the restless ocean.

 

I’d sail a furrow, tame the tangled ocean,

Trawl a gentle trail of silver fishes,

Make home in this moonlit golden place.

 

I shape this place, a dancing ocean of moonlit fishes.

The night is veined with silver

For NaPoWriMo just to say I’ve done it, but I don’t get Sylvia Plath at all, don’t understand her poetry enough to dislike it. So, here is a tritina instead with a bit of darkness in it.

 

The night is veined with silver

Starlight on water, snail’s shiny trail

Your face reveals what you call truth.

 

Too dark to see to speak the truth

You fumble for your reward bright silver

Will it leave a shining trail?

 

So many lies bestrew this trail—

If ever vengeance spoke the truth

It would be with a tongue of silver.

 

This silver light—trail of tears and truth.

Pentacles

For NaPoWriMo a tritina about pentacles.

 

Beneath the sea the sand is silver dark,

Pale pentacles wave blind among the weeds,

Where sunlight’s solace never ever falls.

 

Beneath the moon a silent river falls,

Slips slick and sleek from silver light to dark,

Swallowed by pentacle-fronded weeds.

 

Whiskered creatures wearing widows’ weeds,

Crawl in the tide and creep beneath the falls,

Their suckered-fingers draw light into dark.

 

Dark are the weeds where no light falls.

Winged messenger

For the Secret Keeper’s writing challenge, I decided to write a tritina. I’ve just written a couple with words I chose. This one was much harder.

ANGEL | CLIFF | FAKE | SCAR | NIGHT

Where are you, looked-for messenger,

Who keeps my eyes fixed on the starry night,

Bearing his promises, the true and the false?

 

I count the falling stars even the false,

Mere lumps of rock—no magic messenger—

That disfigure the face of the lonely night.

 

I’ll wait no more on the edge of this splendid night,

To catch a dream that played me false,

I’ll paint the coloured feathers of my own winged messenger.

 

Messenger with night wings, carry me far from these falsehoods.

Poetry challenge Spring in the park: the entries

The tritina is a tricky form to get right. I’m beginning to think that about all poetry forms, so perhaps that’s a sign of progress. We should be suspicious of what seems too easy. Reading these poems I would say that you have all found where the difficulties lie with this form, notably how to use the repetition effectively without it sounding just…repetitive. You have all worked hard to work this one out, and the results are tremendous.

Sarah managed to get an entire story into her poem

Spring in the park: Tritana for Jane Dougherty | fmme writes poems

I like the interpretation Grammy gives to the look of less than total infatuation on the girl’s face. She is the one doing the leaving. The narrator witnesses the change in roles—the man left alone in the rain, without an umbrella 🙂

https://grammywritesblog.wordpress.com/2016/09/07/at-the-park/

Sri loves the rain and rather than symbolising the fleeting nature of love, she uses it to illustrate its joyfulness and purity.

https://srisudhak.wordpress.com/2016/09/07/with-each-other/

Ken works in a shift in perspective in the last stanza that changes the poem completely, from wistfulness to deep sadness.

Endless Rain | rivrvlogr

Manpreet’s poem uses the perspective of the narrator to contrast with the  perceptions of characters she is observing in the park.

Poetry Challenge (1) by Jane Dougherty: a Tritina – The Chemicalist

Leara’s poem is full of spring hopefulness.

On a Bench in the Spring – LearaWrites

Kim’s poem uses music and the ephemeral nature of rain and the changing seasons to illustrate the transience of love.

Rhapsody in the Rain

Merril’s poem tells another story, shifting in emotions from romantic and hopeful to sad reminiscing.

A Spring Story | Yesterday and today: Merril’s historical musings

Imelda’s poem is another hopeful one—after the winter we always get back our spring.

RAIN – MY WALL

Kat shares my vision of desperation in the girl’s face. Her poem mingles spring flowers and endings.

Forget Me | like mercury colliding…

The characters in Janice’s poem share emotions that are as changeable and volatile as the seasons.

Hearts’ spring – Ontheland

Kerfe’s is an impressionistic poem with words as light and hard to catch hold of as the emotions she describes.

Light Shift New | method two madness

 

Thanks so much to all of you for participating. Don’t forget to look in tomorrow for a new challenge.

Tritina: Beneath the rain

Another tritina inspired by the Cornoyer painting.

We laughed aloud, our faces wet,

Beneath the rain of that first spring,

We laughed although our star was falling.

 

The endless summer night was falling,

August days were never wet,

I recalled our rain-splashed spring.

 

If only I could bring back spring,

When happiness was raindrops falling,

And only rain made my cheeks wet.

 

In the wet of spring you left, our lode star falling.