Tableau of My Street

Two magpies warbling

in the sunny day

soar across my street,

my little hill street

beneath the mountain

and the great clear sky.

In all the gardens

lining my calm street,

trees and more trees reach

high and wide. There is

an ease, a leisure,

in their space, their spread.

The magpies, too, are

blithely unhurried

although gone too soon

with their liquid song,

guided by instinct

as their lives require.

They won’t go as far 

as the mountain. That

is home to eagles.

Those, I love to watch

riding the currents

of the lofty winds.

But that’s memory:

an earlier street

the other mountain

and my love, who was

alive then, watching

beside me, smiling.

This town surrounded

by mountains and birds,

and everywhere trees,

delights me daily. 

In the long nights, still,

I know myself blessed.

Sharing with Friday Writings #143 at Poets and Storytellers United. 

Off prompt. Instead I'm pinching a recent form prompt from dVerse: the tableau poetry style. (The instructions say 5 beats per line, but examination reveals them to be not beats but syllables. Beats in a line of poetry are usually understood as the stressed syllables.)

My Dear Body —

When I first encountered you, 

I was interested. I explored you,

like all other objects I came across,

with fingers and tongue; gradually

understood that I felt those sensations

inside as well as outside myself …

realised you were attached to me.

I needed you when I began 

to move about – then discovered

you wouldn’t always do

everything I wanted, were not 

as pliable, agile or strong

as I’d have liked, or even

as some other children’s were.

I was still young when I absorbed

the message that you were girl, therefore

required to be beautiful – and were not.

I assumed that would be forever;

no-one told me to expect any later 

blossoming. The view in my mirror

has remained filtered through lack.

I’m not sure why that mattered so much.

After all, I never thought you were me. 

I saw you as container, a necessary house 

for Me: my thoughts and feelings.

I looked after you, but carelessly,

with the least possible effort, except 

when you occasionally complained 

Only now, ageing, I begin to know

you have always been partner, support,

willing helper, inextricably entwined

with all that I believed myself to be.

I perceive, at last, that brain and nerves –

from when come those invisible tendrils

I've been calling self – are in you, of you. 

Written for Magaly's prompt in Friday Writings #142 at Poets and Storytellers United. 

A Sign!

 

Sudden, the first iris of Spring

appears in my messy garden

(which I’ve allowed to turn to weed

mostly; I’m a victim of age,

reluctant now to bend and tug

to make their sly roots disengage).

At last, the long hard winter rains

are done. This bloom is a message:

‘Rejoice!’ And I do, when that blue

emerges, bright, from dull grey-green.

How the heart surges, to read

this promise that life does renew.

How the flower too must have surged

to be born, pushing its way through

the curtaining dirt to burst onstage

flaring, lighting both earth and page.

Over at dVerse, Laura Bloomsbury recently used the 'octameter' form, invented by Shelley A Cephas in 2007, as a 'Meeting the Bar' prompt.

I don't really have time these days to engage with other  prompt sites (except for occasional forays into micropoetry in various facebook groups) but as I have set myself to experiment more with form this year – and the year is galloping past! – I sometimes go over there to have a peek, and then try something out.

I've decided to use this to respond to my own prompt for Friday Writings #141: Being Bound / Breaking Free at Poets and Storytellers United, on the grounds that it describes one kind of breaking free.

Nowadays

my bed 

goes right to the floor

no bogeyman lurks beneath

darkness is haven

soothing my rest

my cat lies near

ghosts are friendly

visits from loved ones

the child sleeps

For Friday Writings #140 at Poets and Storytellers United, we are invited to write about something that's not so scary any more. I had the classic childhood fears. (Yes, I know in America he is  – now, and perhaps always – called the boogeyman, but he was the bogeyman here, when I was little.)

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

My mouth was shocked silent

when the bombs came.

They shattered my home,

killed my mother and father,

destroyed my world.

The older children cry

as they search for food.

Others screamed 

when they lost their limbs.

I lie quiet on a broken cot

in a wrecked hospital.

If I could scream

would I be fed?

Would anyone come

to take away my pain

and my filth?

I need to scream.

I have no voice.

Written for Friday Writings #139 at Poets and Storytellers United, where the title of this piece is one of several we are invited to choose from to use as inspiration.

I Couldn't Fall in Love with Aquaman [Revision]

 

I wanted to. I expected to.

But the cinema seats were deep 

and soft, and tilted back … and 

there was all this fighting….

(Battle scenes – even underwater –

I always find incredibly boring.)

It was good to see Our Nic,

slim and beautiful as ever

in a role that was ‘different’ for her,

as Aquaman’s mum – great acting

not really required this time, 

although she did all right. I figured

she must have wanted a job

that would bring her home 

a while to see her birth family. 

And they shot it just up here

at Hastings Point, in the heart 

of our sub-tropics. She’d have known

how beautiful, with what great weather.

Even if Nicole couldn’t keep me awake –

and I’m a fan – you’d think Jason Momoa

would’ve had me glued to the screen.

But no, off I nodded. Afterwards I decided 

it wasn’t a problem of the heart; just that 

it was never Aquaman I lusted for – nor even 

cheerful, good-natured Jason himself.

No, it was always Khal Drogo, from the first

instant he appeared onscreen in my home telly.

I don’t even go for large, well-muscled men;

I like ’em lean and hungry, thoughtful, 

and able to make me laugh. The Khal 

shattered every preconception I’d acquired

in my seven decades of life until that moment, 

and furthermore turned me young again. Oh, 

he was something else! How I miss him –

but his element was fire, not water.