Tag: Odilon Redon

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.

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.

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

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,

I didn’t visit the Oracle yesterday, or rather I did, but was too tired to make anything of the words, a combination of migraines and worries (administrative, blocked chimney, broken printer). Today is beautiful, bright and mild, and the robin is still singing.

Longing for clear air, unburdened

Could I dip into this spring ocean,
swim with the high-wheeling birds,
the skeins rowing north,
I would sleep then at nights perhaps,
knowing the sky full of life,
the season guiding the movement.

By the night window,
a robin sings through the darkness,
a song of tender green secrets,
in a hidden nest amid bee-busy blossoms.

This cross-ways heart, the robin doesn’t know,
the still silence of thoughts
that swell fierce as autumn waves,
a good enough reason for singing,
if robins ever needed one.

There was no mistaking the Oracle’s message this morning.

Oblivion

Still we sleep, sweat tangling our hair
in salt-sticky dreams of sea spray and boundless horizons,

while the rain on our skin pocks grave spots,
scorching forests leaf-bare,

and we bask in never-never lands
of languid water-murmur,
bird-lulled in rose-scented gardens.

Winter dreaming

The dream waxes into a forest,
unfolds into a summer flower.

I could live there, like this,
in the nave of bird-chant
that worships nothing, that is everything.

You are a piece of the pattern to me,
the woven, stitched and sung world-hanging
that stretches from winter,
through the burgeoning seasons
to the final letting go.

Like leaves, we sink into soft, cold drifts,
let the crisp night cover us with starlight.

Unlike leaves, we collect wishes with chilled fingers,
hoping that the turning of the year
will see us unfurl again.