Best Ivy Poems
I cannot reach the ivy wildly growing,
The screen will soon cling and cover.
Once I was tall enough and lithe,
But those days are long and long over.
Watching ivy grow is a new way of living,
Quiet and silent days of writing of rhymes,
Wondering at the speed of passing these days,
Alone and rocking through these curious times.
I cannot reach the ivy wildly growing.
The screen may soon cling and cover.
Though as long as I may, I will stand on tip toes.
Leaving the rest to others
It's used as an afterthought, fattening festive
arrangements for Mother's Day, Easter,
someone's birthday. An underrated vine,
enhancing center-stage flowers whose star-power
doesn't wear well. It's the "coming attraction"
that's there after the clapping dies down,
replanted by doorstep or gravestone. "Grow,"
I say, "Change my life with your traveling beauty,
your common denominator, your scrawling
signature seldom sought for autographs.
Snaking around graves at our family plot,
it's an ongoing gift, out-giving the giver
with its "overwhelming darkness", reminding us
where there is life, there is also death. Surviving,
thriving in hanging pots the less hardy exit,
it surprises and delights, reaching down from limbs
of trees for soil, unchallenged there in pine straw
until tender tendrils insinuate their way
to daylight through tapestries of needles
When the ivy becomes dense, I will know
you are there: ivy of my heart, ivy of essence,
the graceful way it swings and sways, how
it takes to new habitat in the way you, Julie,
cut a swath through New York City after lifetimes
in the easy South. We are old souls, older
than the hedera, cousin to ginseng, reminder
of the movement of the heavens, the ability
to bring things together. You were shelter,
the poets' headpiece, bringing peace
to my household. Resurrection and rebirth,
Julie, in this Easter of ivy.
It must have felt like love at first,
The clinging of the ivy vines,
Until his rich red heart had burst.
Her tendrils slaked an ancient thirst,
The tender touch for which he pined.
It must have felt like love at first.
Too guileless to suspect the worst,
She speared him with her soft green tines.
Until his rich red heart had burst.
Her coils so patiently she pursed,
He never guessed at her design.
It must have felt like love at first.
Crazed with cracks, its strength dispersed,
From end to end the wall declines
Until his rich red heart had burst.
So new to love, so poorly versed
In joy, so baffled by her signs,
It must have felt like love at first.
Until his rich red heart had burst.
Budgie managed to get me to write again, I am very grateful to him for providing me with the first stanza, he's a wonderful friend :)
***
Elm stood regally and rigid.
Ivy looked up in awe
and said, a little timid:
“Ahhhh, to be so big,
close to the Sun”
Elm nodded with a focused gaze,
he was, to be fair, somewhat amazed,
and thought to himself:
“What harm could it do
to allow this slight
little weed to wrap
around me, gain my sight?”
She looked so sweet and small,
he was so strong and tall
Ivy snug a little closer
and in a tight embrace
clung for dear life to his twigs,
wound her lithe limbs
'round his leaves,
entangled him with lovely sprigs.
Elm liked that sweet intrusion.
It tickled him in many ways:
"A little higher now, my dear,
just an inch more, yes here."
Ivy flexed her fingers, green
and poisonous, Elm didn't see
through her ambition
from his high position.
"Oh Elm, I'm almost near your head.
Oh Elm, show me your eyes,
I will caress your delicious neck
with my small leaves?"
Ivy wound 'round him in strong embrace,
and before long his breathing ceased.
Then Ivy eased, for from her high up
vantage point, she became queen
could see so far she'd never seen.
And only then she lost her grip...
When Elm broke and crashed
Ivy realised she only ruled
a Kingdom of soil and dust.
***
September 3, 2017
Copyright © White Wolf and Darren White
It’s not too often that a person knows
a bad thing is inside them, and too late
sometimes they realize that cancer grows.
It grows like poison ivy, and one’s fate
depends on many factors. One is time.
How far along is cancer when it’s found?
How fast and high that demon likes to climb.
I wish that we could stomp it on the ground -
to not just flatten it, but take it by
the roots and yank it out forevermore.
When cancer comes, you’ll sit and sadly cry.
To know it’s in you cuts you to the core.
I know because it grew in me one day,
and never are you sure it’s gone away . . .
For the Cancer Ivy Poetry Contest of Chantelle Anne Cooke
You and I, we are,
two polar petals, laced with
arctic blue moonshine
of soft sweven-hymns
and sunburst apricity
of aqua-gold tides,
reminiscing mauve
hours, when our love waltzed in teal
faithful lakes hued with
ivory ink of
coral kismet, shimmering
in wine-auroras,
but now we just trace
poisoned pixie-dust, upon
each other's frail fate,
sinking in folklores
of shaded red canopies,
as I bleed stardust
in ebonies of
hellfire heavens and we fade
like smoked-ash comets;
for you and I, are
we Hemlock and ivy, swathed
in swan-shaped ballads,
floating like hail on smudged graves?
POTD~
In the misery of a paler grey nightfall
she blinks like citrine glazed along walls,
Ivy of Boston flaunts her shimmer without guilt
as palette of amber claims her lustrous glides
slithering with her bohemian lift,
rosette flesh blushing in chilled breeze.
Social climber this paramour, whirling
among plants wanton wild ,
trickles of mist freckle palms of curled leaves-
stem for stem-- translating the language of time,
of how branches relish herbage flow
as my wet hands paddle my dusky breaths
through mid-evening's freeze.
How her alchemy draws gasping sighs
more red than red could ever tease,
and that gypsy's heat...leaving mortals
in awe-...that her fluid pose seems to jut out
from a glass frame to rush forth with all
her womanly senses gushing, snaking,
writhing in the middle of ghastly, boney winter
meant to return on the edge of wild abandon,
enticing men with her faceted charm
never ever the same each time.
velvet under leaves
snaking roots
of ivy
The twisted and twirled
Poison Ivy
Of Pride and Arrogance
In the misty woods of its own,
Retaining itself to be shown
Or itself to be stirred.
The gusts of words
Not able to halt
The poison Ivy swelling,
Swelling on the earth of accessors,
Bringing death to all.
Nothing left but
The misty wood of
The twisty and twirled
Poison Ivy
Of Pride and Arrogance.
Perky Green
Climbing up trees
Chop, chop, itch, itch,
Poison Ivy
Here she comes again with that dingy pink watering can
I’m soaked as it is; I’ve tried to tell her, STOP WATERING!
But no, thirsty or not, I’d better get ready for it
Now Lily doesn’t mind, Peace Lily, that is, she drinks a lot
And that’s her business but I’m turning brown down to the roots
Hey Lily, wake up girl; I don’t like to talk but, PASSED OUT AGAIN!
As for me, is a little soil test too much to ask for?
It’s a bit ticklish, a finger in a sensitive spot
But she’d know that we are all not thirsty at the same time
Well, for now, back to her favorite game, DROWNING IVY!
9/18/17
Things
change
just fall
to shadows
of distant sweet dreams
God seems to be far, far away
the memories of my dead family are fading
I want to hold onto these distant things and memories, so I struggle to keep them
My
heart
broken
love is gone
lost in distant time
I want to be wrapped in his arms
our hands entwined and listening to his heart beating
I need my baby-my mom-my dad and have tea with my grandma and hug my sister
I
want
all these
distant things
oh, can I hold them
and hide them beneath the ivy
protected and eternal and forever with me
distant things we did and precious memories, all hidden under the ivy, twining
___________________________
June 10, 2016
Fibonacci x3
For the contest, Distant Things
sponsor, John Lawless
Third Place
I is for idyll in the way that at 91 years of age my grandmother took such care, attention and pride in her appearance and her home.
V is for vanity as my grandmother was always immaculately groomed,her hair always looking pristine, full face of make up, how fantastic at that age.
Sometimes I think I should take a leaf out of my grandmother's book.
I can see my grandmother nodding in agreement.
Y is simply yearning to have my grandmother still here.
S is savour, I savour those laughs we used to have together, especially talking about my grandmother's war days and her lodger's she took in during the war.
S is also for secondary care. When you get to those senior years in my knowledge most only receive secondary care, except for my grandmother who had exceptional care, love and attention at the hands of her two lovely carer's (or minder's as my grandmother used to call them) Ellie and Angie thankyou for caring.
M has to be for memory, as my grandmother had the most amazing memory. A better, sharper memory than me and my mother joined. My grandmother had the sharpest, quickest brain. M is also for my grandmother's amazing courage and spirit throughout her life.
I is for intelligence, as you could always hold and keep an intelligent conversation going with my grandmother.
T is for tender, as my grandmother was gentile, and affectionate as well as being vulnerable and sensitive. My grandmother was also non-judgemental, she never judged me on being a lone parent.
H is for hereditary for my smith nose, for my grandmother's sense of humour, and of course a hug. Grandma I send you a hug from myself and Daniel.
On a lighter note, on telling Daniel my son of his great-grandmother's death, I said great grandma has died and gone to heaven in the sky.
Daniel replied "only animals go there"
I said people go there too
then Daniel replied 2but the beds are to small"
BYE GRANDMA
Poison ivy of assumption
a seed transforms into vines
your very branches tread fine lines.
Cut off the ones that offend you.
Watch as the ivy desecrates the character you never were.
Hearsay convoluted, convictions flawed.
Are you so jealous or too overzealous?
Poison Ivy of assumption
ruthless as a boa constrictor.
Crack each bone to keep your namesake.
Lessening a stranger's significance
hoping to encapsulate foreign fences.
All for your self decadence?
Prey lay dying
decimation of their very character.
The ivy as a thief in the night.
Wearing its victims skin it entangles and destroys.
Poison ivy of assumption
is no stepping stone sacred with thee?
Every leaf a captured soul
in your self induced sheol.
Void of individual existence
tarnished and vindictive in your webbed realm of deceit.
Poison ivy of assumption
a cycle neverending
this much I know is true.
Still ever present around today.
As green meets green
as dawn meets dusk
as a star fires away from the sky.
I stand in truth to confront this ivy of assumption.
I'll stand neither by it nor for it.
Poison ivy of assumption.
None call it.
None escape it,
None miss it.
I require proof.
While you die in the lies that never was
and never will be.
Poison ivy of assumption
be my guest
but I won't be there to dine.
Indomitable
Inhospitable stone wall
Ivy grows rampant
Green leaves sweep in polished style
Nature knows no boundaries.