Pandemic Lockdown

 

On earth we’re briefly gorgeous,

before declining into beautiful ruins.

After the unbearable lightness 

of being blithely unaware

that something wicked this way comes,

we must evade the forest of hands and teeth

choosing instead what feels like one hundred 

years of solitude. No love in the time of cholera!

For Friday Writings #238 at Poets and Storytellers United, Magaly invites us to include in our writing an intriguing book title. She gives us these examples:

1.        Beautiful Ruins

2.       The Forest of Hands and Teeth

3.        On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

4.       The Unbearable Lightness of Being

5.       Love in the Time of Cholera

6.       Something Wicked This Way Comes

7.       One Hundred Years of Solitude

I decided to be a smart-arse and use them all, but the only subject which seemed at all plausible for such a combination turned out to be the one I've used as my title.

This Modern Life

My energy provider does not 

use AI to speak to me.

I love their customer care! 

Patience. Efficiency. 

A polite human

who understands my elderly

confusions on details.

Also, the quality of music 

playing while I wait 

in the ubiquitous phone queue

is excellent.

A quadrille in response to Sanaa's Q. 252 at dVerse: exactly 44 words excluding title, and using  the obligatory word 'care.'   I came off the phone from the experience described above, to see this dVerse prompt in my email, so the above pretty much leapt into being. Apologies if you were expecting deep and serious poetry! (But, believe me, this matter IS serious.)

Gathering

I gather trinkets now. Indulgences. Now, at last, when my life grows late. 

A silver ring like a fox; earrings like silver roses – though why I need them I don’t know, knowing we can take nothing with us. Nothing, perhaps, except our memories. 

Will you remember me? Now, I know you do; but always?

‘Shall we meet again?’ I asked the seer, soon after you died. He looked, it seemed, into some kind of space, at once inner and cosmic. After a few minutes, said, ‘Nothing surer.’ Then, after another pause, ‘But not in this time.’ 

Well, duh, I didn’t want to encounter you next as a new infant and I an old lady!

Then again, I want always to encounter you. Whichever way you come, whatever body you’re dressed in. 

There is no body you inhabit now. (Well, not as far as I know.) There is the one I remember … in which to dress your soul … your soul which I also remember.

The trinkets are simply symbols. I wish they might also be signals. Do you receive them, in the ether somewhere?

Symbols.     Signals.     Sigils?

I fill them full of intent.

Exploring the zuihitsu form: 'following the brush' – or the movement of the imagined brush.

Sharing with Poets and Storytellers United, for Friday Writings #237: Favourites Revisited, in which I invite participants to identify a favourite prompt and write a new piece inspired by it. When I came to do that for myself, I discovered that there is no particular subject I prefer, but that I most like prompts to which I am inclined to respond using form, particularly some form I feel I'm not adept with and need to explore. One of my current favourite forms to fit that bill is a style of prose poetry called the zuihitsu. I'm not sure I'm even getting it right – but making the attempt is one of my poetic pleasures.

That Childhood Game

 

I remember the huge puff

that blew the dandelion seeds 

all 

off

to fly away on the air, 

and you had to

get the lot

in one whoosh.

I can’t 

remember why – 

any of it. 

Something

about love … ?

Do you think 

I’m getting 

old?

A quadrille for dVerse's Q251 Light Burst of Air

(A quadrille is a poem of 44 words excluding title. And including one compulsory word, in this case 'puff'.)

Guadalupe

The Guadalupe was green. 

Soft green, as if cloudy.

Not transparent, but secret,

glowing with inward light.

I sat with Anne

on large, flat stones

extending into the water.

The Guadalupe was green.

We watched three tall black birds 

forage, from stones in the centre.

We spoke of poetry, Reiki, 

friendship, and being blessed

to live in places of beauty.

The Guadalupe was green,

almost turquoise that night

alongside the wooden veranda

where our restaurant table

was full of new friends, good talk,

red wine, and feasting.

The Guadalupe was green.

He swung his truck to a stop, unplanned, 

for a river walk in the sun.

We laughed with a little boy, and 

a small happy dog … pretending we could be 

always ... knowing we could not.

The Guadalupe was a shade of green

I’ve never, anywhere else, seen matched.

Stranger, I longed to merge

with the depths and bends

of that river, to stay connected

forever. Perhaps I did.

Written for Poets and Storytellers United's Friday Writings #235, where we're invited to write about a body of water that holds a special place in our heart. I'm a river lover: mainly the Tamar in Launceston, Tasmania, where I grew up, and the Tweed in Northern Rivers, NSW, where I now live. But I've also fallen in love with some rivers in places I've only visited, most notably the dramatic Urubamba in Peru, and the mystical Guadalupe in Texas, USA. 

Shield with Owl Figure

 

This gilded and silvered copper disk reveals

outstretched wings and grasping talons,

inlaid eyes of shell and turquoise,

light reflecting off contrasting movement.

The Moche (the Mohicas) flourished

six centuries: from Nepena River Valley

perhaps as far north as Piura River.

There was no tradition of writing –

the precise significance of owls 

at the burial site of Loma Tegra

is unknown. (Owls prey, fly at night ...)

Of mystical or divine power,

Owl is my guardian on my left side.

(On my right I have Serpent.)

Written for  Poets and Storytellers United at Friday Writings #234: Words for Images, this is largely an erasure poem taken from the long text about this artwork at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The erasing leaves me with some quite big chunks of sequential words from the original and also qualifies as a found poem. Only the last two lines, italicised to differentiate them from the rest, are my own words. (I did also place the third line of the third verse a little out of its original order.  It makes more sense this way in this context – and I so wanted to use it, for the wonderful sounds of the words as they roll over the tongue.)

Image and text are in public domain, open access.

But ...

 

It is the first Solstice of the year. The email asks us to tune in at midday our local time and ‘quieten outwardly and rise inwardly’ to ‘be part of a great chain of LIGHT around the planet.’ It suggests we ‘can touch and bless the hearts and minds of all people as they walk on Mother Earth and with her creatures.’ 

I do that. Later, in the mid-winter evening with overcast sky, I don’t take my old body out to commune with the elements. Instead, I light candles on the tiny altar in a corner of my bedroom, and do a small ritual there. 

no moon no stars –

but beyond walls and clouds

their shining lights

I think about things to let go of now, and others to bring in. We adapt with age. As my body gradually wears out, it is no longer easy for me to travel, nor even go out at night. Yet I am very content to stay safe and warm at home with my little cat, to read and write and dream. 

long cold night –

but my small cat purrs

in her sleep

There is much trouble in the world today. Was it ‘ever thus’? It seems our troubles are far more desperate than those of the past. And yet, the world remains beautiful as far as I can see.

still dark out –

but the beginnings

of birdsong

Written for dVerse Haibun Monday: First Solstice.

The quotations in the first paragraph come from a friend's newsletter originating from White Eagle Lodge.

Teeth, Hammer, Blooms

 

I read poems of past love, lost love –

and remind myself: no love is ever

really lost, or past. But so many

varieties! Some are sweet-smelling,

pretty while they last, but lasting

no longer than ephemeral blooms.

Still I think fondly back on their

kindly delights. Memory preserves,

even if I seldom return to them now

to remind myself of that sweet scent,

that simple, delectable taste.

Others are like crashing hammers

tearing down walls, opening up

separateness into huge, inclusive 

vistas of possibility, expansions 

ready to be enriched with detail,

then further expanded, further filled. 

Eventually, though, there is nowhere 

further to go without a fading 

into the amorphous. After all, 

a building without fixed edges
becomes vague, collapses to nothingness.

I dwell longest on those loves that satisfy 

like good food: you can get your teeth

solidly into them; the taste remains

on your tongue; the memory rises at will

to your recollecting palate. They fed you,

nourished, sustained. Perhaps, if

there was an end (there is always an end

sooner or later, even if it’s not until death),

you can still return years later and feel

that old enrichment renewed – that old

groundedness which is the best enchantment.

Written for Poets and Storytellers United at Friday Writings #232, where we are asked to include in a piece of writing the three words I have used in the title of this poem. I am also inspired by reflecting on a couple of the poems in Rajani Radhakrishnan's new book, No Way Home.