A month ago I was persuaded to give Substack a try. To my surprise, I liked it. If anyone was wondering why I have gone quiet here, it’s because I’m posting poems and stories over there and can’t keep up with being in two places at once. If you’re interested, I am at https://substack.com/@janedougherty47
Category: Uncategorized
Sleepy Hollow
We went into the village this morning, the nearest one to where we live. It’s a nice old place, very Medieval but well-maintained, on the River Lot. On the way back from the baker’s, I noticed this graffiti. Given that the General has been dead for 54 years, seems like there’s a certain amount of catching up on current events to be done there.
Haibun for a new kitten
The little savage born in a field who inveigled her way into our house is turning it upside down. Fearless as only cats can be, assured of her superiority, dominating human and canine, she leaves a trail of destruction in her wake. Bix has accepted defeat, but Redmond still rises to the bait, playing snip-snap the hand and punch-in-the-face. Our hands, arms and ankles are longing for teething to be over and for her urge to subdue all that moves to pass.
New life leaves and loves
a whirlwind of learning
before the world ends.
How to fight bigotry
If you’re at a loss as to how you can do your bit to fight bigots, here is my two-point plan.
1) Look up the dictionary definition of a bigot. Or let me do it for you. This is the Collin’s English Dictionary definition:
‘a person who is intolerant of any ideas other than his or her own, especially on religion, politics, and race.’
2) Try not to be one.
Tomorrow, I’m going to show you how to fight Fascism.
Using the right words
Using the right words
Writing poems does not make me a poet,
any more than owning a colouring book makes me an artist,
any more than being a prickly customer makes me a hedgehog,
any more than disagreeing with your opinions makes me a fascist bigot.
As petals fallen from the roses
A poem taking its title and first line from the last line of the last poem I wrote.
As petals fallen from the roses
As petals fallen from the roses,
memories crowd the dry clay,
insect-trod and crawled.
Petals fallen, scentless
as memories, so old
their parchment is scorched,
sepia-seeped and smeared.
These roses remember
a time long ago
when people had sepia faces,
and they sat in silent sadness
beneath brown clouds,
and brown rain fell,
though they say the sun shone too
but never quite enough
to give colour to those cheeks
and petals fallen from limp bouquets
held in sad, sinewy hands.
The clay was always dry and cracked,
then like now, and the roses never did well
beneath the hot south wall.
Rosetta
In case anyone was worrying about the little scrap in the barn. This is where she is now, in the spare room beyond the big door to the rest of the house. She can get up into the attic and we can keep the dogs out of this part of the house. They’ll have to meet sooner or later, but I’d rather it was later.
More wishes
More wishes
So much I wanted from today
and so little, because the small things
are the hardest to find.
Sky full of storm and a cricket sawing
its obsessive melody by the window,
chitin armour impervious to dread.
No birds sing in the quiet,
roaring with leaf voices rising
with the falling night ,
and another day ends
with no perceptible change,
the small thing unfound.
Douceur
Douceur
There is a gentleness in the rain,
une douceur mélancholique,
like the soft pulse of a vein
dans la pluie qui tambourine
sur la terre gorgée d’eau, the refrain
of a song that tip-taps, il pleut, il pleut
while the sky rains tears it cannot retain,
tout en douceur, un alambic
too full to take much more pain.
First bird
First bird
In the early morning,
bright with moonlight,
I heard the first nightingale,
singing back the incoming dawn-tide,
singing for a mate still on the wing,
or asleep in some distant tree.
I listen to his persistence,
never pausing in his broadcast,
as if in the moment’s silence,
her wings and head heavy with flight
and the sands of Africa,
she might pass him by.
The Four Swans 