Best Bulrushes Poems
Hereabouts the thinning glades
Of sparse grey Birches:
Brackens crisp copper tresses
All aglow;
Gently waking Snowdrops
Lift their sleepy heads
From leafy beds of woodland moil,
When tucked snugly up,
Out of intrusive sight and just
Below.
Fondly the slowing bend
Hugs upon the river...
Banked heavily with frosted
Bulrushes
That shifting breezes once did so
Stiffly blow;
The faltering current,
That sped the pied Dipper,
Patiently seeks out the quiet
Devotions
Of her beguiling flow.
When the drawing Moonlight
Gives way to purple Twilight
In the gloaming
Of Winters sharp days;
When the yellowy willows
Weep watery glints
Lingering and loitering...
Pining for long Summers slanted
Rays.
For far, far, high above
Over the old red-bricked mill...
Whose creaking sluice gurgles
With long melancholy sighs:
Heavens twinkling stars,
Held briefly in abeyance,
Partially obscured by thin veils of
Dull-leaden, magenta tinged skies.
Where the low horizons fall
And briefly meet the mornings
On heathered moor, open field,
And inland shore:-
Here beached boats dreaming
Of white crested waves;
Soon the keen plough will make
Ready
To score the deep furrows once
More.
Now our Lady Skadi,
Purest and resplendent,
Through driving sleet
And blinding blizzards will ascend -
Returning to aged fortress
Of eternal Utgard
Leaving her thawing snows
To dispel long Winters End!
SUMMER SUNSHINE - "Sonnetina Rispetto"
Thank you Lord for this golden day,
This sweet sunshine that smiles my way,
This warm wind wafting through the grass,
That makes my heart dance in delight;
Thank you Lord for this summer light,
That bids bulrushes burn as brass;
Thank you Lord for this golden day,
This sweet sunshine that smiles my way;
Thank you Lord for these birds that sing
A lovely welcome this morning,
This warm wind wafting through the grass,
That bids bulrushes burn as brass;
Thank you Lord for this golden day,
This sweet sunshine that smiles my way.
----------------------------
14th May, 2016 (posted on 15th May)
{Dedicated to Anne-Lise - the Sunshine Smile of Poetry soup and one of my first friends here}
{Thank you Dorian for your lovely poetry form}
{Thank you Peter Duggan - your poem "How wonderful it is" inspired me to try out this new form}
(The "Sonnetina Rispetto" is a new poetry form
created by Dorian Petersen Potter
on September 8,2009.
This form has 14 lines with 8 syllables each.
It can be written in 3 quatrain stanzas and a couplet or
with an Octave(8) and a Sestet(6) lines.
The rhyme scheme is as follows: A1,A2,B1,c,c,B2,A1,A2,d,d,B1,B2,A1,A2.
The capitals A1,A2,B1 and B2...stands for the refrain lines in the poem.
Any subject)
(This is my first poem that won POTD and I was so touched. I felt honoured. This will always be a special one for me)
Magnetic attraction, enchanting dream of a lifetime -
majestic pyramid attracts my eye,
mystique draws me in
O, your architecture! Pavilions, colonnades; art enclosing art,
every square inch deliberately designed,
ceilings pour forth scintillating splendor
Antiquities from Rome, Egypt, the Orient:
trying to wrap my head around art
created in Mesopotamia 6,000 years ago
Dazed and captivated in your Greek sculpture hall:
Bronze beauty, marble magnificence,
Venus de Milo seduces still
What history you have archived on your walls and pedestals!
Charlemagne holding his scepter,
Louis XIV in regal resplendence
Oil on canvas communicates genuine genius
Rembrandt, Rubens, Raphael,
Vermeer, Van Dyck, Vigée-Lebrun
Mythology awakened to life in marble:
Hera, Hermaphrodite, Neptune, Nymph,
Psyche and Cupid
Even commoners respectfully regarded:
Messina's military man, Brueghel's beggars,
Michelangelo's dying slave
Centuries of religious faith expressed with grace and grandeur:
Moses in the bulrushes, Islamic ivory,
the penitent Magdalene, Virgin and child
Artistic vision reflects and redirects history:
Renaissance masters forecasting the future,
Monet's Impressionism a daring new style
Fifteen minutes till closing, where have the hours flown?
What of tapestries, textiles, drawings, decorative arts?
Alas, another day.
Highlight of the day, world's most famous painting:
mysterious Mona Lisa smile
thanks me for coming to visit
Louvre:
timeless testimony to artistic aesthetic
cathedral of contemplation
history of humanity
Written 15 Sep 2020
The Dream of a Rill
Up in the highlands a leafy green dell
where day dreamers dream in the quiet still
blissfully dreaming beneath nature’s spell.
Where clusters of daisies cover the hill
and soft sighing zephyrs sway the blue bell
slow dancing in time by a bubbling rill
The rill herself is a wandering stream
And she, like the dreamers, has her own dream
She’ll leave the green dell, and finally flow
beneath the old bridge where children do wade
bypass the tall pines in long serried row
all standing up straight, like scouts on parade
Then winding through banks where the bulrushes grow
mid marsh marigolds that bloom in the shade
She’ll meet with her fate, a strong river free
And join its bold rush to greet the wide sea.
Not a true Choka...but uses a 5,7,7,5,7,7 format
-------------------------------------------------
Chill, steaming vapour;
Silence over pale water;
Faded, thin wisps of ribboned
Pink
Above the east gate;
I dip oars...and silence
Breaks.
Trace of flame in lilac sky.
Raise, lean, dip and pull;
Sculling forward little
Twirls
Swirl away from dripping
Blades;
Uplifted soul -- soaring!
Remembering how, when young...
Each new day would bring
New hope.
Extends the shoreline --
Sweeping inwards at the
Point;
Green bulrushes in the bay;
A bittern booming:-
Rising up like slow thunder
Drifting out of jade mountains.
My busied childhood,
Hidden pate not yet shaven;
Shrimping with a fine mesh
Net;
Loud, boyish laughter;
Brimming jars crammed with
Sunbeams --
The golden, darting minnows.
Horizon widens,
Shadow retreats from low
Hills;
Gathering orb comforts me;
Selfsame warm comfort
When held by sleepy women
In cold grey of early dawn.
The vaguest murmur,
Faint as drowsy breathe,
Of the soundings of dim chimes...
A call to prayer?
Hands hard-clenched on the
Staid oars;
Restrained by yesteryear.
Dawn is a broad, unflawed painting
hanging on the loose threads of light,
hiding first behind wavering bulrushes on
the soft spikes of day
before spilling the good spell on us
of a new beginning.
Rippling brook rushes
Swollen with spring rain gushes..
Eddie place bulrushes
Alligator suns
Basking her tough hide, sun buns..
Hippo destroys fun
Spring turns winter's tide
Nature comes quickly alive..
Bees buzz hopes for bride
For: Carol Brown
Contest: "Whats' The Buzz"
When the woollen industry died,
the reservoir that fed the old mill,
became disused.
The water meadow at its head
became a swamp.
Developers,
who want to build houses everywhere,
take one look at the quagmire,
sniff the stench fouled air, and walk away.
The channels are long blocked.
The drains are long broken.
So a freed, unmanaged, unmanacled nature;
binges on the anarchy of liberation,
brewing a brackish broth of sweet stagnation.
Children are warned to stay away
from the deadly, dangerous, disease
ridden slough.
Lest the Knucker Dragon, swamp devil,
swallow them whole.
Bulrushes,
point brown accusing fingers to the sky,
blaming the heavens for their
muddied becoming and placement.
Blood worm larvae,
orphaned Fly Nymphs,
ravenous in the root and stem of grasses;
greedily gorge without discrimination,
where cannibal repast; is often a relation.
Herons, are shadows that pass over,
heading for the cleaner waters below.
Snipe scutter
in the soft mire, poking for grubs.
Busily burying beaks in the
flowering Bogbean, and Hogweed:
Yellow Flag Iris,
and Ragged Robin,
rampantly roar a rich cacophony of colour.
Beady eyed, scruffy small,
fat water vole.
Mining leerdammer labyrinths in the banks,
faring fine on favoured vegetation,
prosperously multiply in stinking habitation.
Red-winged Blackbird
Look! There in the bulrushes,
Perched at an angle to the reed,
Is the Red-winged Blackbird
Keeping a close watch on his territory.
How do I know it’s a “he”? Easy.
By the jet-black plumage
And the red and yellow epaulettes
That distinguish him from a “she.”
The female’s feathers are rustic colours
With white patches underneath
And white streaks on the back and wings
That blend in with the surroundings.
See! I spot her sitting in the nest,
All snuggled in, keeping her eggs warm.
Quiet—not moving, not wanting
Anyone to know where she is.
Listen! And hear his three-syllable
“Conk-la-ree” cry piercing the air,
Which can only mean one thing to his mate:
Love! And he will be there for her.
Slowly, I back away,
Not wanting to create a disturbance
Or cause undue stress
For the birds.
By the bulrushes,
Where darting blue dragonflies
Flit like neon sparks,
Hover flies pause and patrol,
In the drunken summers haze,
We sat fishing by the lake.
the blog wars
hiding beneath and behind
the tufted heads of the nine tailed cats
awaiting the unsuspected entry
of inane innocence at large
devious despoilers – these demons
perfections faulted protectors
exacting a price they cannot pay
holding an ideal as a weapon
denying the truth of a single beauty
because it stands among so many
mocking the buds of beauty’s quest
as inept imposters to the throne
sticking the thorns of jealous roses
into the hearts of blooming daisies
hiding in the bulrushes of ego’s
self inflating fallacy
yet still intruders crash the gates
bold interlopers plodding onward
toiling in the trenches of a dream
unfazed by guardians failing scheme
John G. Lawless
10/12/2015
submitted to – Best October Poem – Poetry Contest
sponsor – SKAT A
Moses was set adrift on the Nile in bulrushes,
The freedom fighter had encounters with God,
And trembled at the sight of the burning bushes
Mountains quake, earth trembles, heaven is a flood.
With rain, thunder peals, and the lightning flashes,
Exodus begins with the terrors of Gods wrath,
The storm in converse, moving to battle marches
End the endless servitudes that deny good health.
God is a deliverer, the most daring commander,
Write the laws for generations to understand.
Hear children crying from far, and draws nearer
In the clouds going by crossing the burning sand.
Echoes of the storm warning through retribution,
After enduring advice with death and curse strife,
The end of grief made the brief choice of freedom,
A Passover for angels to hand out generous relief.
Ten terrible plagues did not cleanse their mild faith,
Only approves of pride where arduous sin survives,
Stubborn and steep, the rank street stank with death,
Sweeping aside the familiar and magical voices.
Exodus, going out of one mess into another wilderness,
To Mount Sinai, memories made the hardship escape,
When tabernacle blesses, holy war rebellion possesses
The ten commandments people’s mind could not keep.
Troops scattering and stumbling off their feet,
Fall upon civil heaps into the deep trampling waves,
Pharaoh’s host would lie silent forever in defeat,
Piled up at the bottom of the trackless seas.
Turn of events snatch away the cruel margin of duty,
Rest for the weary, in the land Moses never knew,
The wandering warriors finished foreign captivity
And after forty years the pleasant land was in view.
Conclusion, salvation is Gods promise blessing
Hope for the future that our offspring may inherit,
Egypt was left empty, the perils of a world becoming
A weaker state of humanity than Eden exhibit.
In a river marsh, where pondweeds and cattails grew in warm clime,
the fair girl found a tall, black egret
with whom she could have a chat;
and was it the same one that her parents rescued from the wild?
Among bulrushes taller than she actually was,
the anxious girl told that bird one of her wishes:
to hop on his back and fly as the happiest butterfly,
and find her mom whom she remembered singing a lullaby.
" Take me to my mom!" she begged the wading bird.
" Nobody ever takes me there to visit her" she exclaimed.
" She may be miles away from here...way past the blue ocean!"
He replied with little confidence, lacking a sense of emotion.
The fair girl kept on begging, until the black egret finally nodded.
" Thank you, kind bird...now let's fly and depart from this marshland!"
So the two of them ventured into a cloudy sky expecting no rainfall...
not until they had gotten there safely and heard that sweet mother's call..
Your Eyes Are Like Magic Marbles
Your eyes are like magic marbles
made of blue sky madness,
they draw my sharpest senses inward
rendering me helpless to your red devouring lips,
which pucker with a blinding instinctive intensity,
as with silent snakes seeking a cooler ground,
hidden inside a hotbed of conniving bulrushes;
your perfumed presence bringing out deliriously
a powerful draw upon my protruding screaming loins,
as if you had stolen my lapping eyes and tongue unseen,
rendering them completely to the burgeoning sky beast,
that now swoops down with grasping talons of arousal;
as you sprawl before me with plumes of mad impulse;
we lie naked, moist and spent; two lovers embracing,
forgetting about time and trouble as living human beings.
Your eyes are like magic marbles.
Nature nurtures blooms and blushes
With redbirds, bluebonnets, and bulrushes
And peacock-curtained cirrus evening skies;
That unveil a Milky seine before our eyes,
Alluring our awed admiration
With magnetic, majestic fascination;
Easily eliciting an emancipation
To unparalleled faux freedom;
Fostering fleet-flying feelings;
Sending stunned senses soaring
Inevitably inducing intoxication
Which connects our inebriated emotions
That persuade our treasured, deeply hidden internals
Into exaltation of the high supernal.
"for contest FINETUNE THIS COLLABORATION sponsored by Line Gauthier".