Poetry – The Four Swans

For this one night

The Oracle didn’t send this one, or if she did, it was without me consulting her. Life is so busy at present; I’m juggling too many projects, too many visitors, and several back issues over the last three weeks. Excuses, I know, so here is the poem I wrote for yesterday’s Broken Spine prompt (blood), topical for yesterday and today.

For this one night

Night dark is spangled and netted with stars,
crisp glitter, tears in our eyes,
the cry of an owl.

Almost I can believe I see beyond, to the place
that is always summer of plenty and laughter,
where love never fades.

In the wind that blows
between one year and the next,
I hear the whispered voices, never forgotten,
the soft tread of feet that know the way home,

and in the wavering candle flame,
sparks rising to confound themselves among the stars,
I feel the flutter of so many gentle hands.

After Carrickfergus

After Carrickfergus

A wish is lost
in the ocean sleeping,
and ships that sail never bring love back;
the summer’s past, for all my weeping,
and roses fall in winter’s frost.

A wish is dead
as soon as spoken,
and I would follow if I could.
The word you gave me then is broken,
and I cannot see the way ahead.

For the sea is wide,
and the years yawn wider,
the salt stings cold as any tears,
and the stars look down, a mute reminder
of all that rolled out on the tide.

And it leaves no trace
on the sands of morning,
your parting promise to return,
but I’d give a world, the sun adorning,
to glimpse again your sea-soft face.

Dusk, before winter

I’ve been monumentally busy, but the Oracle is always ready to listen when we ask. This poem uses almost all the words she gave me. Not sure what the message is, but I’m listening.

Dusk, before winter

The ache you left, how deep does it go,
deep as death?
And the chanting beneath the night clouds
is it for me?

My feet drag as I walk to the lake,
unwilling to take the fatal step
into the dark water, beyond the light.

I listen for music,
not the cry of the owl,
the voice of a lover perhaps,

but the sky,
shot with the last gold
of the sun that has set,
is mute.

I wade deeper.
My ship has sailed.

A piece of news, soft and sad

I haven’t posted here for a while; life has been busy and tiring. Time to hear what the Oracle has to say about things, and, as usual, she already knows the news. Not anyone I knew personally, but a mother is a mother.

A piece of news, soft and sad

The words blow away in this brisk wind
too many leaves already dead
and sloes shrivelled like prunes.

We tread on rotting fruit
where wasps and hornets sugar-skim
making for the green morning.

A mother died before the light
and never saw this new day
colouring slowly with summer

but the jays shriek anyway
and blackbirds sweep the hedges
a cat whisks her impudent tail

because of the day
the green of it
and the sweet rain passing.

The dimming of the light

I missed posting last week though I did consult the Oracle and did write a poem. We had one of the children staying for a few days, it was fierce hot, and I was struggling with a new round of line edits. I sent off the corrections yesterday (finally), so it’s time to catch up.

The dimming of the light

I hear an echo these summer days
in the swash of waves on the rocks below
the cool cave where she whispers her words.

I hear a weary faded colour
peach perhaps or old rose
like the pinched sinewy patterns in poplar bark.

We gave them warnings in the purple dawns
lava flowing electric green
plagues of tourists like the Northern Lights
the death of grass
the silent spring.

If they prefer their trash to the sight
of morning hares or moonlit hares
a meadow specked white and yellow
rain on new green leaves
the smell of the sea
new-cut hay
of a river flowing home
there is no hope.

Rain sighs into the sound of weeping.
Night falls.

Burning

The poem the Oracle gave me was to be expected.

Burning

Death drips slow as honey from this melting sky,
and the day-lit moon dissolves like a pearl in acid.

I watch yellow leaves drift in a restless breeze,
hot as deserts that pulls this way then that,
but always away from the green that fades
like a childhood memory, of sun shade dapples,
cool on the skin, of petals cupping morning dew.

And I hear the murmuring among the trees,
the papery voices of the dead and dying,
Who will be next?

Slipping away

This feels like a draft or the start of something. The Oracle gave me just the first line, so I might not have finished with this one yet.

Slipping away

The lake bends the blue of its arm out of sight,
not beckoning,
holding a secret in tight-closed fist.

Is it the heart of summer, she wonders,
wrapped cool in fir and larch,
or the bare bones of winter,
rattling amulets and relics?

Or is it the spring, lost and never to be found,
that meandered away, whistling,
with its pockets full of broken promises?

The forgetfulness of being

The forgetfulness of being

Beneath the skin,
the drapery and decorations,
we are all the same, they say,
all have drunk from the same source,
swum the same amniotic sea,

but why do some forget the tenderness of its touch,
the fingers’ brush so soft,
the whispered words of the waves
that fill every tree that has leaves to speak?

The meadow lies silent in the heat, and no birds sing.
In this silence so much is forgotten,
but your eyes have never changed,
nor your step that parts the faceless crowd,
and I remember that we are not all the same.

Lifetimes

Lifetimes

Blood is thick, sluggish,
reluctant to leave the home channel,
salmon-wise, returning to the source.

Do fish ache in their hearts
or does the great engine that pumps fins and gills
drive and drive onwards, mindlessly,
over obstacles and oceans, even into death?

We give in easier than the silvery fish,
stay where the living is softer
though the heart aches and aches.

We let the ship sail, wave it goodbye
through floods of tears that last a lifetime,
never understanding what is the one true god,
nor how to recognise its voice.

What I never knew

What I never knew

I never knew those times of donkeys and turf smoke,
The smell of corduroy wet in the rain,
mornings of such pale green and the stone walls grey in the half-light.

I never knew those times of silence in sunken lanes,
only the clipping of hoof-beats and larks rising.

I was not born when those times were grown rare,
and the poets were writing their longing for home
sitting where the sea meets the shore,
and only the eye and the heart travel across the divide.

I never knew those times, but my grandparents did,
and who are we but shoots of the old tree,
scions of the sod that birthed us all?