Haibun mea culpa

The dverse haibun prompt is in honour of Earth Day. What a joke. Whose turn is it tomorrow?

Instead of wandering lonely, looking at clouds, drooling over daffodils, extasising over the blackbird’s song, walk along the main road in the dust and fumes of the traffic, among the detritus tossed from car windows, past the open sores of cheap tacky businesses more tape worm than ribbon development. Instead of getting in your car and driving to somewhere pretty, look at the ugliness of our daily existence, the havoc we wreak with landscape, the tractored and poisoned fields, the bunkers where animals exist for their short terrible lives. Just look at that and ask, is this the earth I want?

bird in the field
searching for a stray worm
each brood one chick less

Cleopatra dreams

This pantoum is for Merril’s dverse prompt. I’ve just written it and I feel quite proud of myself. It’s based on one of the most moving of Cleopatra’s speeches.

Cleopatra dreams

I had a lover once, perhaps I dreamed;
no human man was ever such as he.
I’d sleep and never wake, so real it seemed,
that dream means more than flesh and blood to me.

No human man was ever such as he,
in sleep, awake, or walking this round world,
that dream means more than flesh and blood to me,
an emperor, draped in love’s flag unfurled.

In sleep, awake or walking this round world,
we’d draw their jealous gaze, those you’d despise,
my emperor. Draped in love’s flag unfurled,
no sun, no moon shines brighter than our eyes.

We’d draw their jealous gaze, those you’d despise,
for what we have, the common mortals lack.
No, sun, no moon shines brighter than our eyes,
bluer than day’s sky, darker than night’s black.

What we had, the common mortals lack,
I’d sleep and never wake, so real it seemed,
eyes bluer than the sky, his hair night’s black,
I had a lover once. Perhaps I dreamed.

Things I did once

Inspired by a theme suggested by Kim at dverse, a rough sort of draft that I might go back to.

Things I did once

I used to like to put things in a box,
in a drawer out of sight,
the special things that mattered then,
because things did.

In all these years the things are just the same,
the box, a capsule, full of fragments of a time,
symbols of the me that was,
who treasured things dead hands had once
held close and treasured too.

When I am gone, the things will stay,
their meaning lost, just magpied bits and bats,
eclectic moss and gew-gaws left
of lives my children never knew,
a world that’s lost.

The magpie laughs,
we’re all no more than glitter-gleams
in the fiery eye of the sun.

Death by starlight

Inspired by the line of poetry proposed for dverse’s prosery prompt.

Death by starlight

If the stars that sprawl,
a spilled treasury,
across the night, are dead,

if their light is the last expiring breath
of fire from a dragon’s throat,
its painted stories burning low on the dark horizon,

if each blink is a death,
each wavering spear-point
a tremor in the ether of space,

what does it matter
that the feral kittens are dead,
and the cat cries in the night wind?

Stars

A wayra sequence for dverse. The photo was taken by John McKaveney.

Stars

Far above the world,
worlds turn about other stars,
dance with moons and meteors,
their light falling as slow
as trees grow, as dunes blow.

Is there life up there
in the cloudless, silent dark
is there music and laughter?
What do I know? A bird
sings to the rising sun.

In this bright night sky
there is mystery, beauty,
garlands of starlight strung out
on the horns of the moon,
and a starman, always.

In the dark

A puente quadrille for dverse.

In the dark

In the dark, the contour of your face
softens into pastel dusk,
cheekbones slide with delicacy
to the concave of cheeks, lip ridges part

~shadow-deep~

in the dark, a blackbird sings,
a moon sails on gentle seas,
night fills with promises,
unspoken words, tomorrows.

Shadow poems

For dverse.

Defining

Shadows, the obverse of light,
light, the glow, darting shafts, golden swell of the sun,
sun, radiance in the dark,
dark, the sifted debris of day,
day, the rising from the ashes of night,
night, the mantle of space, embroidered with stars,
stars, the crucibled origin of fire,
fire, thirsty tongues that lap up the shadows.

Ripples

Shadows grow
slow and long
songs sing
wings beat
heat pours
soars the bird
word speaks
beaks jab
grab and stab
dab the fish
a-swish in the shallows
hallow this glade
made of shadows.

The shadows’ seasons

Is there a form in that clustered darkness
the shape of light before, behind?

Does it grow, stalk cut-throat close to the wall,
or shrink, burdened with the weight of age?
Do roses clamber, apples swell, sweet and ripe,
where is lies dense as fog and ignorance?

I see no pulse of life in that grey,
no bees feed, birds nest, no children play,
and the old folk draw their chairs into the sun,
move the plants to a sunny sill,
shun the gathering cold, the touch of winter.

Sí an Bhrú

For dverse

Sí an Bhrú

It delves deep, hugs the land,
ringed about with stone,
whorl-worked the lintels,
the passage in the dark.

I went down into the dead place first
when I was small enough
to know the ghosts by name,
to feel hands take mine
and whisper stories from the times before.

I remember the air still and trembling
on the brink of revealing a world
almost lost, not forgotten.

I remember running my finger
in the tracks of magic,
the symbols on the brink of consciousness
that led into the dark,
split by a shaft of sun, palm cupped,
to spill light five thousand years a-growing.

I remember the soft stillness of the air,
like the touch of a beloved hand on my cheek,
the feeling of belonging, to the dark,
the bones, the whispered voices,
the strings plucked by the wild west wind.

Haibun for spring blossom

For dverse

The wind scatters
what spring unfolds—scented trees
humming with bees.

Winter black boughs cover slow, in these woods that scarcely ever see a fall of snow, with white and honey-scented blossom, plum and pear then pale pink of cherry and peach and apricot paler still. This snow of blossoms means winter’s over, falling in the winds of March to make room for the misty green of spring leaf.

In the new light
pale petaled and feathered
dawn sings joyous

Pyrénées unbound

Another version of the Magritte ekphrastic poem for dverse. An ottavo rima.

Pyrénées unbound

Mountains have no roots, their sleep no dreams,
no limits to ambition’s flight, no sky
binds up their clouded heads in misty streams,
as silver-sleek as salmon. Eagles fly
beneath their feet that tread where no light gleams.
In lava veins of fire-blood run dry
as desert dust, the salamanders roar,
their flames a scarlet wave where cold fish soar.

These eyrie-airy, shale-grey flinted slopes,
bare as bones picked clean, a world askew,
tied to the coping of the sky by feathered ropes,
hover weightless where no kestrel ever flew.
A dwelling squats, claw-spread and high as hopes,
stone tossed on stone, a Babel in the blue
of oceans, where grey-scaled fishes sing
the wind, the world unmoored, a broken wing.