The cracked mirror

Last NaPoWriMo prompt, and I loved it. Thank you for keeping this until the end.

The cracked mirror

She moved slowly, carefully
in the shadowy interior,
from kitchen to main room,
of the ground floor flat that barred its shutters
against the flowing river of the street.

I could see her slow precise movements,
touching, arranging, dusting,
always careful, unhurried, solitary.

Perhaps it wasn’t dark inside, just unlit.
Perhaps she didn’t need light to see where he sat,
facing the TV, or by the window to read the paper.
Perhaps everything was as it always had been.
Except for the old man’s space.
Did she fill it with a ghost?

A ghost that called in her sleep,
a voice so loved, she could no longer not know, not look.
Perhaps, half-sick of shadows, she threw the window open,
to look down the flowing river of the street, straining
to hear the fading tirra lirra of an old song,
admit that it was empty,
and he would never come home.

Walking into the storm

The NaPoWriMo prompt today is to write a sijo. I’ve never written one before, so I adapted a triolet I wrote yesterday, which in turn provoked a haibun to explain why I wrote the triolet. Here are all three.

Walking into the storm (haibun)

Yesterday I wrote a triolet. It had been storming all afternoon, thunder, lightning, high wind, heavy cloud and intermittent downpours of rain and hail. Redmond pestered and pestered to go out for a walk, so in the end I put on rubber boots, raincoat and took the pair of them out, across the meadow, to walk along the stream under the trees. Needless to say, Redmond soon decided this wasn’t exactly what he meant, and Bix got into a state of high anxiety. Both of them bolted for home the last stretch of the way, and waited by the stove to be towelled dry. The triolet came after.

so much green air
squeezed from heavy cloud
rivulets leaping

Walking into the storm (triolet)

We walked into a storm today,
the sky was dark, the wind was high;
I called to you, you wouldn’t stay.
We walked into a storm today,
You hunched your shoulders, turned away;
You might at least have said goodbye.
We walked into a storm. Today,
the sky turned dark, the wind too high.

Walking into the storm (sijo)

We walked into a storm today,
the sky was dark, the wind was high.

I called to you, you wouldn’t stay,
just hunched your shoulders, walked away.

I never thought the storm that broke
would be the one that meant goodbye.

Spring is

For the NaPoWriMo prompt—alliteration, consonance, assonance and rhyme but not much rhythm.

Spring is

wind on the hill and the ruffle-rill
of rain water running by,
clumped clouds, scurrying across
the cold blue of the sky,
bud-burst and burgeoning,
the sweet swell of blossom
in the thick of the hedge,
hazel and hornbeam at field’s edge.
Spring is the singing
of a thousand bird-voices,
noisy and joyful as children
released from school,
pools carp-dark and deep,
the glint of sunbeam-smiles on the skin
of our dappled and dimpled stream,
teeming with new life.

Dreams

The NaPoWriMo prompt requires including a line, a memorable line of someone else’s poetry. The golden shovel is a form that preserves the integrity of the original line, using it in its entirety, but you only see it if you know it’s there. I’ve written two versions of one from two different perspectives. I thank Shakespeare for the inspiration.

The sty of contentment

They envy such as we,
those whose lives are
humdrum, who have such
banal wants, the stuff
that fills attics as
soon as the novelty has worn off. Dreams
of white-sanded beaches are
what fill their nights, hand-made
souvenirs bought on
a local market and
real bargains. They envy our
happiness with so little,
our simple, authentic life.
What we have is
well-balanced, healthy and rounded.
enviable by
any standards, a
life not unsimilar to sleep.

A sort of peace

The world has little time for such as we,
whose wants are
few, our desires such
as stillness and small beauties, the stuff
as hard to find as
childhood. Our dreams
are abstract, the things that are,
not bought, sold or made.
We have only this road we are on,
those who walk with us and
share stories and sorrows, our
companions for a little
piece of the way. This life,
all that we have, is
one another, our bubble rounded
and cradled by
green meadows, a sort of peace, a
dream without sleep.

Battle crow, peace dove

For the NaPoWriMo prompt, a poem of two battling objects or ideas, a cleave poem seems appropriate, where one side says one thing, the other its opposite, and together they make a new poem.

Anger sadness and Fascism

The NaPoWriMo prompt is to write a poem using repetition of a colour. Today, I am angry, and this haibun is about the colour black. No need to keep repeating its name, it’s all around, shouting at the top of its voice.

Today in London, a man was stopped from crossing the road where one of the endless pro-Palestinian marches was passing. The man was prevented by police from crossing because he looked ‘obviously’ Jewish and his Jewishness might upset the marchers, who indeed did gather round and taunt him with chants of ‘scum, scum, scum’.
The man who was ‘obviously’ Jewish was subjected to hateful racist taunts yet he was the one who was causing the problem. He was the one who was told to get out of the way. Not one of the chanters was even asked to stop. None has been called to account.
Had any of those self-righteous protestors even heard of the Battle of Cable Street? When between 200,000 and 300,000 Jews, Anarchists and Socialists prevented Oswald Mosley and his British Union of Fascists blackshirts, with the protection of the London Metropolitan Police, marching through the East End? Were they aware that this was the moment when British Fascism was stopped in its tracks? By a bunch of Jews and those who stood shoulder to shoulder with them?
I wonder which side today’s protestors would have been on?

nights are darker now
dreams full of blood and vengeance
martyrs to a cause

History, repeat

The NaPoWriMo prompt calls for a historical event. The Oracle gave me this, which is not so much about one isolated event, but about the whole course of human history.

History, repeat

They live in plain sight,
those drunk on death,
no need to cloak themselves in shadows.

Black has always been their colour;
they absorb the dark,
and they need no sleep.

They say they have no mothers,
no women, no second-rate goods,
were used in their making.

No moon softens with silver
their cropped hair, no wind
disturbs unruly locks.

We have grown lazy,
asleep on our watch; we let them walk
unhindered beneath the sun.

Once victims, they wear the victor’s smile,
twisted with irony, as they listen
to the scratching of our ineffectual fiddles.

The same boat

This does answer the question that asks what haunts me, and it is the answer that will hunt us all. A contrapuntal poem for today’s NaPoWriMo prompt.

Bliss

For the NaPoWriMo prompt.

Bliss

There are so many places to sit here,
where trees blow green-feathered,
and meadows stretch at either hand,
rolling down to the banks of the stream.

I can sit in the porch out of the spring breeze
and listen to birdsong known and unknown,
pick out the soloists from the chorus,
as they arrive one by one.

There is a soft warm stone to sit on
beneath the mimosa tree,
canopied by gales of bee-song, and another,
beneath the hornbeam shade for hot afternoons.

I sit, am sitting, would sit forever,
where running water makes spring thunderous,
where summer sun is broken into harmless dapples,
gently crooning with warbler music.

The stream runs on, and I rise to follow;
the removal man needs to take this chair.

A note to a mother

For the NaPoWriMo prompt. Not exactly a postcard. Where would I send it?

A note to a mother

Not a day when I don’t wish
you were still walking Spanish mountains with your friends,
sitting in a café with Dad,
working among your plants with fingers
that could coax verdant growth from stones,
singing in concerts with your choir,
playing with your first great-grandchild,
working with your pencils, silks, paints,
listening to the sorrows of a grandchild,
smiling with pride at the artists you produced,
holding the hands of the mother-to-be,
sitting here with me,
watching the sky change,
listening to that thrush.