One liminal space among many for dverse.
The pool in the woods
By the pool, the water dark and deep,
where oak and hazel trees grow thick and high,
to shake their wild hair in the night sky,
I toss three white pebbles and make a wish.
But the carp that rises, snaps a ripple-gleam,
makes no salmon leap, as silver as the moon,
and dusk is full of the salt-sharp taste of stars,
too distant far to fill this empty hand with dreams.
The Four Swans 
The photograph and poem complement one another so well, one gives entrance to the other. But as representation, the poem traverses a greater concourse and the enigma of “three white pebbles” and the wish, the “salt-sharp taste of stars” — a co-mingling with tears, perhaps — too distant suggests a liminal space from which, if passage there be, is not apparent. What a consuming read, Jane, beautiful and bittersweet.
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Thanks Dora. I draw a lot on Irish mythology, which itself lives in a liminal space between myth and history, dream and reality.
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This flows beautifully….there is an underlying feeling of mystery here! I love this đŸ’œ
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Beautiful, Jane.
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Thank you xx
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I can’t leave a comment on your poem, but I liked it a lot. Nightmarish, like the image, the kind of place we get lost in like an airport, a hospital, or a dream where there is nowhere to go but onwards.
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Dusk can always take you either way. (K)
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Twilight is between the two, at either end of the day.
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“the salt-sharp taste of stars,”–a poem of beauty and sadness with echoes of Yeats.
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Thanks Merril xx Deep pools surrounded by trees, fish rising, always make me think of Yeats and his Aengus.
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You’re welcome. Yes, I get that. xx
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“the salt-sharp taste of stars”….brilliant! …JIM
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Thank you! I’m pleased you like it xx
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How enchanting this is though the ending is an empty hand of dreams.
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It’s often the case, I think. Thank you xx
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To fill this empty hand with dreams… lovely poem.
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Thank you xx
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We are always searching for the perfect place… but I feel as soon we believe we have found it we search for faults… Lovely descriptions both of what it is and what if could be.
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Yes, we are eternally dissatisfied, or eternally nostalgic.
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We toss our pebbles and wish for silver salmon but only find carp…such is life, Jane!
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Thanks Lynn xx
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Pools, especially in Irish mythology are definitely liminal spaces – holes in the solid land where wishes and curses and healing spells and all kinds of magic are possible – great poem Jane…
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Thanks Andrew. Yes, there’s always magic in the sources of things.
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