Springtime on the ranch is just round the bend
You’ll get your nose cleared, we have cows and pigs
The thaw brings forth chores, that smell and offend
Rubber boots and gloves are now our new digs
As the snow melts, we are left with a moat
Springtime is here with its bag full of tricks
It’s sour and slick, so just clear your throat
The thistles now grow so watch out for pricks
The air never smells like sugar and spice
Out in the birch, there grows fly agaric
It deters the skunk, encrusted with lice
This mushroom will make, all feel lethargic
A blend of toadstool and garlic I’m told
Will stop puffy butt from reaching our fold
Categories:
agaric, humor,
Form: Sonnet
It's summer, and sunlight's syrup pours sweet into afternoon.
We've come to the bungalow's cemetery
to pick over bones of bygone days;
touch time's tender skin, lay flowers on childhood's grave.
The lodge is razed to the ground. We raise
our eyes to sky and take each big breath of blue.
Sharp lemon-light cuts through
the detritus of our days; the oaks once cloaked in dark.
The knotweed nooses and dreamlike domes of fly agaric
have all been cleared; the forest sentinels' leafless limbs
discarded - an abattoir of strangeness, sawdust-strewn.
But all dismemberment is a clearing of sorts.
The echoes of emptiness eavesdrop
on each reminiscence, as we forage for a few last remnants:
blue paisley swirls of 70s tiles,
red bricks from an 80s fireplace.
A yearning rises suddenly, slick sick-sour in my throat...
and yet, it feels cathartic, this purging of the past;
this merging of our then and now,
this blending of bitter and sweet.
23 February 2023
Categories:
agaric, nostalgia,
Form: Free verse
A wisp of blue
Morning mist
Caresses the mirrored lake
As a pale yellow sun
Slowly filters through;
Two Mute Swans
Sail effortlessly by
In stately splendour.
A rivulet trickles
Beside a bridge
Built of mellow stone;
Here field mice
Will find refreshment
Through their busy day.
High above
A sycamore tree
Not a breath of wind
Stirs a single leaf,
And down below
A Fly Agaric
Stands silently proud
Like a miniature
Red umbrella.
Sitting, in his fold-up chair
Surveying it all,
A lone fisherman
Drinks in the scene,
And breathes
A contended sigh…
Categories:
agaric, nature
Form: Free verse
Wandering traveller of the night
Occult creature,
your velvet butterfly tongue leaves thoughts lingering in my mind
as visions of obscured beauty pass before me,
in the shadow of your smile
hypnotic, illuminating
to pluck the thoughts out of the void
like petals from divine lotus
streams of consciousness pool, playing before our shimmering eyes
in crescent moon lullaby
melodic rhythm of throbbing life,
spinning illusion
illuminated in violet luster
revealing truth hidden in images of splendor
every hue brilliantly diffused
in the immensity of an unshattered silence
fragmented bliss,
I sleep, lulled deeply in Morpheus' embrace
and so I ask you,
if I am a child of the light why do I feel so at home in the dark?
falling tears die delicately
as you told me that
today is the child of yesterday and tomorrow
innocence, captured peacefully
formed with golden bough.
Strange, twilight child,
lost in your mercurial pleasure
set free my naked soul
shivering, into darkened night
ascending on stairways of delirium
to the orphaned city of stars
Categories:
agaric, introspection, life, mystery, nature,
Form: Free verse