Gardens

I took the first words the Oracle gave me. They were enough for today. I realise now that the poem could almost be a triolet, so I’ve worked it into one.

Gardens

Sun would fill this garden with dreams,
all the cloud colours of sunset.
This garden would dream in the sun,
meteors of green, volcanoed flower-bursts,
remembering how rain fell in dreams
with the tinkling music of broken stars,
filling night gardens with dreams
and the light of a million suns.

Gardens in triolet

The sun would fill this garden with dreams,
The colour of clouds at the end of the day,
Tasting of rain and the rush of spring streams.
The sun would fill this garden with dreams,
Deep ocean dark where sea treasure gleams,
With the glitter of stars that the tide washed away
Into sunlight that’s flooding this garden with dreams,
All the colour of clouds at the end of the day.

Wind blows

After W.B. Yeats

Wind blows

This world is full of weeping,
and the berries in the hedge,
will wither with the keeping,
and the wind blow through the sedge,
with a breath as cutting keen,
and a breath as cutting cold,
as the vows when we were green,
we regret now that we’re old.

What comes after

It’s gloriously sunny here, and we have a full house until Monday. Taking a few minutes break to consult the Oracle, and she’s reminding me that storms are on the way. Again.

What comes after

The wind is raw, blue,
we trudge where ice cracks,
and cold mud clings.

Trees moan
with their fluttering leaf-mouths,

and the bitter scent of corruption
blows low, a slow gurgle,
where once there was a garden,
and it was full of music.

Light-dark

The Oracle gave me a strange selection of words today, that worked themselves into a poem not so strange after all. And of course, Odilon Redon had exactly the right illustration for it.

Light-dark

How could I be man,
hair dark as night
and cloaked in the shadows of my moon,
that tears a hole in the blackness, shines,

when I am full of fierce suns,
the eggshelled futures,
a brood waiting to spread their wings,
rise?

Yet when the moon rests,
retreats into the dark side of the sky,
his hands are gentle-dark
and sweep the shadows smooth,

make the music that becomes my song,
the painted earth that we fill together.

Waking

A rhopalic verse, for the Scavenger Hunt. It grows!

Waking

From pearl,
a pale mist,
the half-seen face
of a mother, bent
over her sleeping child,
dawn’s light touch ignites the glow.
Indistinct earth swells, ocean green,
growing slowly brighter, singing with
all the hues of morning, birdsong-painted,
meadow-scented, stream-clear. The mother smiles,
the child wakes, laughs and catches up the first sunbeam.
This, the mother, earth, dawn whispers, is how things begin.

Sedoka

For the Scavenger Hunt. I’m not up to a prolonged rhyming contest today. My neck hurts and it’s far too hot. So here are two katauta to make a sedoka.

Sedoka

On the golden brink
our world waits in peace and calm—
when I fall will you catch me?

When our world falters
tips I will take your hand so
we slip away together.

Limbo or liminal

Limbo or liminal

Beneath and above
this lake mirror of ocean-blue
this rain of foaming spray
wild waves cloud-misted
we stand earthed together
in knotted sorrow and happiness
we soar winged
feathers bright as silver scales
in the sea-sky
hovering in the short breath
between birth and death.

Hidden meanings

This is a transcription of all the words the Oracle gave me, in the order they appeared. It was odd that they seemed to form so many short phrases. Shame about the sausages; they were plural this time too.

Is like play
Some sing purple
Cool ache
One petal was black
Light if you want
But skin finger
A trudging up apparatus
Diamond I water
Me to
And by my lust
Symphony drive as show
Frantic sausages
Me.

The first ‘poem’ is a found poem. The second is a cadralor.

Hidden meanings 1.

Play
sing purple
ache petal-black.
Light up
diamond water
to show me.

Hidden meanings 2

1.
Awakening is like the play of water,
of birds singing in purple,
the cool ache of half-remembered dreams.

2.
One petal was black, I recall.
Put on the light if you want,
it will still be there, held in my burnt fingers.

3.
He called it a creation machine,
that made diamonds from water droplets.
I asked, could he make a diamond of me too.

4.
It was my fault, treating us like a show,
conducting our symphony with the frantic energy of a hostess,
until the orchestra went home.

5.
We have to probe beneath the skin
for what only casts shadows, peel it away,
release the light, and let it shine.

Desolation

The Oracle gave me a stanza in ottavo rima this morning. Maybe she was thinking of the massacre in Moscow. Nothing ever justifies terrorism.

Desolation

The wind is still that played about my face,
with music human fingers never drew,
of wave-curled misted seas that gird a place
with seal-song, fish-dance, birds that never flew.
The tide is run, the screaming gulls, the race
of sun and moon. The sky obscured anew
is heavy, shot with sorrow, falling rain;
the only language spoken now is pain.

Life

To quote the Oracle
‘Their purple one showed.’

She offered me this phrase, but I honestly didn’t know what to do with it.

Life

Sleeping in the egg,
serpent, chick and hero,
all will turn their faces to the sun.

Time draws us ever on,
flying too fast,
when we would have our wings
carry us in a slow glide,

and turn our faces into the sun
gilding a green hill,
bathed in the smell of the sea.