I Wait

I wait, four curtains distant, eyelids guard my memories: her in dusk’s clothing, beauty like the clean evening mist that hangs from lavender’s tips, never to rust. There’s power in fading away... Rust, it’s silent, inevitable journey from skin to heart. But I clean and clean, preserving beauty, love framed with the gnarled timbre of … Continue reading I Wait

Schubert, Love & the Trout Quintet

(after Ron Pretty's Poem "Four Hands") drunk on melody: the music school’s broad halls edged with slouching squares of light shared that rippling lucid treble. I saw the river in window-glint the flash of trout - their spangled dance, and my cheeks swam with pink, remembering the way you annexed my hand, sowing warmth generous … Continue reading Schubert, Love & the Trout Quintet

Hetty

For reasons they don’t understand the puddle by the gate never dries up and the frogs knee-deep all through the summer Hetty likes to squat tiny bottom almost in the water watching the squiggle of life, silent as first light. In a bucket in the laundry Hetty is feeding caterpillars. Nat says it’s hard to … Continue reading Hetty

lantern festival

We bent wire, looping and tying. Lantern skeletons sprouted like line drawings and then bold paper shades of floating persimmons. The river gleamed reptilian in darkness spotted with tea lights. I couldn't see your eyes just sails of light bobbing and hueing and the small gods their shimmering reflections Written for Twiglet #266

thinking of fish

Winter Landscape with Skaters and Bird TrapBy Pieter Breughel the Younger - http://www.antiques.com.pl, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12429232 jack daws beep and chatter knowing our insignificant flying the feeble flags of scarves in noon's fish-eyed pallor the houses stand starched snow hats white as boiled lollies dimly reflected in jaundiced ice underneath I’m conscious fish are watching … Continue reading thinking of fish

April

The bed looks blue, like cold lips and so still, clothes tucked ‘round; the kitchen, its tiny yellow kettle and fridge that grumbles all night long; and her mother’s chair, the dents for buttocks and head just resting… always in the coarse weave of floral chintz. Those roses on the upholstery stay alive, while vases … Continue reading April

In the Way of Progress

When the bulldozer came for our house we sewed signs into the windows that said “panegyric government perpetuating poverty” and the great machine purred there like a cat contemplating a lizard’s tail. Then a bloke yelled from the driver’s seat “What does it mean?” and we yelled back “Look it up in the dictionary!” He … Continue reading In the Way of Progress

Still Life with Night Sky

(i) the moon with patina of mushroom skin premieres in a stodgy sky she’s shrouded in the feathers of candles’ breezy death. (ii) imagine if one galaxy were a grapefruit: dimpled skin and the mirrored arching through soft amber caverns what colour is the sun? (iii) a pomegranate between the flesh-white stars disguises itself as … Continue reading Still Life with Night Sky

Beginning

Fay Collins "Sunset and Squally Showers, Connemara" The falling shale of a thunderbolt’s bellow cracked wide sun’s yolk a glow like breath of dragons emanated permeating sky's shelfless larder cloud syrup skein on skein perspiring down toward pigmented sea and granite blade and the steaming gratification of rainfall Written for Sarah's dVerse Poetics - Fay … Continue reading Beginning