How many?

How many?

How many mornings left
of green leaves waving,
golden blue skies and tender sun?

Warblers sing the coming rain,
hearing the rising cloud-tide,
drops falling far away.

How many?
Enough perhaps to slake the thirst
of these wild throats.

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Reptile

Once again, the Oracle shows that she sees and understands.

Reptile

Heat lies still,
a basking dragon,
where dew once watered roots,
and claws scratch runnels
where rivers ran.

Heat sings
a dragon song,
brass and bronze,
discordant
as an ugly dream,

beneath a throbbing sky,
where blue
is an intangible shade
of steel,
sweating drifting feathers.

Crossing the line

Last week’s Earthweal prompt was Otherworld. I never got around to it, so I’ve written one now, late. The painting is by JMW Turner.

• 

There are places and people and times that we miss,
places to linger and people to kiss,
and the magic of moments beneath sky’s blue dome.

There are veils and deep shadows, bright sun on the waves,
hands held in comfort, the soft word that saves,
and on the white strand we’ll dance in the foam.

We’ll dance in the foam with the wind in our hair,
and the call of the gulls will draw our feet where
gold light falls through boughs sprung from generous loam.

I’ll walk with my shadows beneath the bright sun,
and walk through the sunset when my day is done,
in the palm of earth’s hand, when she gathers me home.

Pictures and Poetry challenge 3

Thank you to

Lisa

Lynn

Kerfe

Merril

Christine

for joining in last week with your stories that explained the uneasy look of the child on the escalator. Apologies that once again I wasn’t able to reblog all of them.

I’ve chosen a couple of lines from Francis Ledwidge this week from his poem The Dead Kings. The Turner seems to illustrate them, or one aspect of them, to me. I’d like you to write a poem, any kind of poem, inspired by the words, the image, but also by the title of the poem and the fact that it is a war poem. Ledwidge didn’t write poems from the trenches full of mustard gas and fox holes, but full of longing for his native countryside and observations of the countryside he saw around him, even when it must have been shelled almost out of existence.

 

A few stars glimmered through the morn,

And down the thorn the dews were streaming.

From The Dead Kings

 

 

Hope this appeals. Looking forward so reading the results.

Forgot to add, if you join in, please leave a link to your poem in the comments by next Tuesday and I’ll try to reblog.

Haiku challenge: Darkness & Deep

Who couldn’t write poetry to those two words? A trio of haiku for Ronovan’s weekly prompt.

Deep water rolls green

and cold among moonlight pearls—

darkness crowds the sky.

 

Deep the river runs,

carries broken things seaward,

into the darkness.

 

Darkness falls again,

winter cold and deep, sinking

like the waning moon.