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A quiet life

The Oracle’s message is a harsh but just one.

A quiet life

I drift above cool clouds,
above the billowed beauty of wind-blown roses,
the rising rain mist.

I soar above the world’s worries,
remembering only the good things.

I sleep in pink drifts,
away from the gull-screaming sea and salt-sprayed cliffs,
close my eyes and ears to the small boats sinking,
the children too weak to cry,

and I turn up the sound of complacency
that tells me it’s not my problem.

And I would so like to believe
the nodding-headed person with impeccable teeth,

but the wind brings the stench of death,
the beached whales of the end,
and whispers that it is my fault too.

Whales and the water-world

Not sure I’m going to have time to visit the Oracle today. This is one I wrote a few days ago.

Whales and the water-world

We come from water,
the salt drip of birth water,
the pulse of pumping water through the veins,
the distillation of starlight
in the gaze of the great whales,
drifting moons in the sunless profondeurs,
where krill glitters like golden dust motes.

Tongue-taste the salt in sea winds,
the nip of blood, the ooze of spring sap,
and the pop of mussels marooned by the tide,

and hear how whales sing a ziggurat,
climbing slow from the dark of the deeps
to the dark of the sky, a monument
of all that was, all that we were,
all that we have forgotten.

The dark times

The dark times

Away is a bitter word from a friend
like gone and no longer.

Let me take it to the lake
crown in with Ophelia flowers
and set it to the sea.

No mother’s milk of human kindness
no light fingertip brush of the skin
this summer’s heat will sear and soar.

Ask me why my arms ache
and I will say from the weight of blue and black.
Bruises you placed there instead of kisses.

The time of ignorance and brutality has come
and I wish I too could float
among the indifferent flowers.

Bird-music

The Oracle knows what has been waking me in the mornings.

Bird-music

The bird that drives the dream
fills the garden with beauty, pouring waves
of notes, oceans and seas, into tossing skies.

The bird that sings the song
drives the tides, that rock the ship
amid the waves, flying foam-feathers.

And in the spray of singing,
what wind will drive this water-music
with such wild joy?

Not-so-dreaming

The recent magnetic poetry site has gone. I’ve been consulting the old set for the last few weeks in any case, but I wouldn’t like to think I was partly responsible. If the Oracle leaves, what’s to become of us?

Not-so-dreaming

It was a diamond dream or a dream of diamonds,
or perhaps a dream of a diamond mother.
Perhaps it wasn’t sleep at all, only not-so-sleep,
because the sky was the colour of rain,
and the shadows on your skin were pink as roses,
petals drifting on dark water.

There must be blood in the wind; it has a bitter taste,
and the day aches, weeping dry tears.

A violin plays somewhere, a story of love gone sour,
or lost or died. The ship has gone—
left at the water line, those pink petals again,
and I wonder if these are your last words

In the beginning

I used the old set again and the Oracle gave me a peaceful, soothing message. I reworked it into a duplex sonnet.

In the beginning 1.

In the beginning was beauty,
petals unfurling in a mist,
joys and sorrows
of paths trod and not trod,
falling blossom when new leaves come.

She says, there is no sadness
when the sky is heavy with the pink clouds of evening,
lowering the dying sun gently into the west.

Look instead to the beginning, she says,
the misty east where blue seeds nestle
among the first stars,
whispering the faint music of promise.

In the beginning 2.

Welcome, Spring!

I used the old magnets today. Opened the link by mistake and decided it was providential. And a watercolour by Odilon Redon.

Welcome, Spring

She took my arm and asked did I not see
the wind in his hair, the wind that tosses forest leaves?
The sap is rising in the earth, she said,
the juice and joy, the wild tides.

The spring is greening fast, I said,
sea gales roll in echoes among these hills,
and in his hair I see wind and waves,
the blue and purple distance,

but what I love the most is slight as mist,
the pale jewel light in hidden nests,
the tender glow of spring flowers,

Secret language

Secret language

Flower language knows no love,
no generosity, loyalty, hope.

Petals speak earth, loam, rock,
friable sandstone, limestone,
the ooze of silt, soft sunlight.

I listen with all my ears, eyes, fingers,
tongue-taste their subtle breath,
but nothing in my complex human brain
can follow the threads of plant-thought,
their beacons of bright bee-light.

From the hedge, white-blossomed,
blackbird tilts his head,
and in that black bead eye, jet,
washed smooth on a northern beach,
is a world I can never know.

Satellite

How to say ‘moon’ without saying ‘moon’. An imagist poetry challenge in less than 90 words.

Satellite

Sky-ghost,
an amputated limb,
shattered matter, gathered,
coagulated, redefined,
our captain, helmswoman,
wave-puller, path-lighter,
since we had eyes to raise to the heavens,

but we forget so much
in the nights of glare and din,
of beacons, watchlights,
and the soft-falling of silver,
and we believe only in brilliance,
the searing, heartless
fire of the sun.

Night and horse wings

A poem from the Oracle that didn’t want to stop.

Night and horse-wings

I

Sleep through windy nights, she says,
lying in strong arms.

Let the storm soar and swoop on fierce wings,
black waves beat about the ship,
clouds tear like raw wounds.

Take the purple not the red.

Leave your sorrows in the world that is passed
and find the seam where the gold lies,
the light and life of tomorrow.

II

I remember swimming in bitter water
while beauty ran like melted wax or fallen roses.

We worshiped false gods then,
the glitter in the shallows.

Our eyes full of sun, we said rain stings worse than salt,
but it was only the shadows beneath our eyes,
running like melted wax, fallen roses,

and we never saw the blue horses
that grazed between night and evening,
between purple and gold.