Night fears

I have a pantoum up my sleeve to post for the Scavenger Hunt, but I’m taking a break from eastern poetry forms. It isn’t on the round the world list, but this is a Welsh form, the toddaid. Couplets of 10 and 9 syllables, but with a cross-over rhyme (middle of 1/end of 2, end of 1/middle of 2°, straight rhyme consonance or assonance, and alliteration. It’s one that I like. Maybe someone would like to try it out.

Night fears

Must dark succeed the light, night follow day?
Sun-bathed I’d stay, let dark’s tide recede.

The scattered sparks of stars that strew night skies
when day dies, are mute. I’d hear the larks.

And though pale and silver is the moon’s glow,
bathing all below in a soft veil,

the hunting owl, the fox and timid deer,
night fear persists of the wolf’s wild howl.

A vain hope

For dverse. Well, we got Echo and Narcissus again.

A vain hope

He lounges by the pool in the golden dawn,
where hare and fawn drink and dream-like days unspool.

She calls, but her tongue is tied, he doesn’t hear,
her pleading is unclear. When purple evening falls,

he drains his cup, sighs his name. Golden Echo cries,
Narcissus! Eyes brim when he at last looks up.

March morning

March morning

In the morning light, at the meadow’s edge
beneath the hedge, runs a hare out of sight

of greedy eyes. These winds of March that blow
blossom wide, below broad and cloud-strewn skies,

sow scents of spring, sappy green, rain-lush.
Hare stops his rush, tells blackbird, Time to sing!

Clear blue

Clear blue

This is a blue morning, chilled with winter breath,
sharp as death, and bright as spring dawning,

last gusts before the cold door closes tight,
on the year’s night, nectar-sweet as bee lusts.

Looking back

For the dverse quadrille prompt.

Looking back

Mornings of white frost-fur, crisp spring, I long
for summer birdsong, bee-hum, the years lost,

never healed of childhood’s cloud gazing,
in meadows, cow grazing, of memory’s fields.

In an idyll of dreamland my sleeping self walks,
where the griffon stalks, I slumber still,

A question for myself

A question for myself

What more can I ask of a day so full
of beauty, a lull in the wind, a sky

dappled with clouded sun and broad white wings,
a thrush that sings, as if knowing winter’s done

and budding trees, already blossom white,
the cranes’ wild flight, borne upon spring’s crisp breeze?

Spring-burst

A 44-word toddaid for dverse’s quadrille prompt.

Spring-burst

Senses fill with spring, budding green, blue-washed sky,
A rill of song, a finch-red eye, a golden wing,

bee-drummed scent of woodbine sweet, honey-rich,
a hazel switch, and catkins silken pelt.

Bird-trilled, paint-splashed, bee-drunk, sun-gold you,
add sky-hue blue, one touch, spring’s canvas filled.

Bud-burst

Bud-burst

Damp wood still winter-dark, hedge full of song,
birds sing, it won’t be long till bough and bark

are lost amid spring green of unfurled leaf,
and all of winter’s grief forgot, taken wing.

Calling up the spring

A toddaid for the dverse lilacs prompt.

Calling up the spring

Too soon for lilac’s heavy scented spires,
on wires where vines will climb, a bevy

of tree pipits ask, are we nearly there,
eying bare black boughs where chicks will bask,

and the air sings thrushes songs at morning,
plum blossomed-dawning, white as swans’ wings.

February fog

For dverse. A quadrille in the form of a toddaid.

February fog

They cling, dark days, after Brigid’s fires
die, light tires, cold fog damps the blaze.

Bird-shapes dart, silent land, ghosts in the hush,
tree and bush, indistinct sentinels stand.

We start, imagine terrors in each sound,
hear hoofbeats in the pounding of our hearts.