Best Reedy Poems
Somewhere downriver, among thrushes and the swallows,
Ducks in hidden hallows have silky, satin wings
Among the reedy shallows, swim ducks in hidden hollows
rest awhile where willows lean, and haloed twilight clings
Summer's been forsaken. Now the leaves are drifting
A constant current takes them to where the sun resides
Dreams are carried with them, in waters ever shifting
Without much hesitation. a few are cast aside
Sodden leaves are drifting, to where the sun resides
I watch the streams meander, and I hear the seasons call
Water soothes the jagged stones, and sparkles in the sun
The moon arrives and sun goes down, as if from earth it falls
Then it melts into the river's flow, and seams blend into one
I hear the seasons call, as the seams blend into one
_____________________________________________________
Contest: 255
Sponsor Brian Strand
Categories:
reedy, nature, river,
Form:
Free verse
As I paddled the river Nile
I met a monstrous crocodile.
She smiled at me enticingly.
I smiled deferentially.
Through large white teeth to me she said,
"I want you in my river bed."
"We are not acquainted enough
for such intimate, tasteless stuff,"
I cried. A hippopotamus
opined, "Hey, we're amphibious.
We're inclined to romp through marshes;
come, let's crush some reedy rushes."
I paddled hard away. The Nile
now swirled by rapidly awhile
to the sea. There where its two brinks
grow apart it flows past a sphinx
who lies prone and thinks endlessly
deep thoughts about eternity.
For eons and eons his mind
thought thoughts about how to unbind
gravity from mentality
throughout universality,
that we might freely float;
no more need to paddle my boat.
Unfortunately, he has no gumption
to follow his least assumption;
but we do chat on fluently
of, to wit, stuff way beyond me
like hieroglyphic-ally writ
papyri. When he will not quit
I wander alone to a tomb
where lies Cleopatra, of whom
each schoolgirl knows; how her last gasp
came as she clasped to breast her asp.
Grasp that story's significance
twixt geometry class and dance.
Whilst she patronymic-ally
reigned, a most royal Ptolemy;
she told Marc, "My new last 'nym' now'll
be 'Anthony'." This, post her roll
out, quite nude, from Julius' rug.
His offer of sex met her mere shrug.
I stood amid a pyramid
or three and pondered where they hid,
these pharaohs, all their treasury.
Was power or mere pleasury
their true architectural plan?
To ever tell, no pharaoh can.
These writs I write as my boat drifts
midst original hieroglyphs
through the Mediterranean.
I don't need a librarian
to see, no sociology
compares to Egyptology.
Categories:
reedy, adventure, funny, me, me,
Form:
Light Verse
MAYFLY
I’m shadow’s child,
grown on the lake,
by women on their own.
The reedy cattails,
and brown mud pots,
occupy my time.
I’m taller now,
and skinny too,
like some noxious weed.
And in a minute,
with one frail breath,
I’m a woman too.
I’m golden new,
in nodes of light,
my love is truly found!
Our baby girl,
is born to us,
then left for her own love.
I’ve slipped between
the sun and moon,
I’ve suddenly grown old.
Getting small, moving slow,
like some darling sloth.
“But I just got here,” I yell,
to an empty brightened room.
“I want... a Do Over!”
Who hears but the lamps,
as they blink back in shock,
and the light on the wall,
is their last for the day.
The laugh from a Mayfly,
is cruel for the count,
by shadow, by weed,
by wrinkled old sloth.
Last flicker, last moonlight,
last tick of the clock.
Deep breath, deep dream,
the stardust blew out.
By Edlynn Nau
Written: May 5, 2017
©April, 2019
Categories:
reedy, age, childhood, death, growth,
Form:
Free verse
Martin came to a cleft in the rocks
The oriole must have gone this way
It was narrow and curving
A sudden turn, and everything seemed to change.
Shrill, reedy music of pipes filled the heavy air,
A smell of musk of goats and their dung.
Invisible cicadas sustained the piper's lament.
Suddenly, he found himself in front of a small but deep lake.
Weeping willows, large copper-coloured beeches
Surrounded by a large pool of azure water.
There was a calm tranquillity about the place
Whilst the air was saturated with a fragrance
Of exotic flowering lavender-like trees.
He heard a splash, and out stepped a young woman.
Her canary yellow elegant swimsuit
Clung wetly to her honey-coloured body.
Damp citrine hair formed a frame around an oval face
That was highlighted by an upturned, pointed nose.
He did not move but stood mesmerized,
Looking into her blue, limpid eyes.
A sweet smile shimmered on her lips.
"Hello," she said in a mellifluous voice.
Her smile was inviting. "My name is Goldie Oriole.
Come, sit near me
And tell me how you found this place."
To be concluded in Part 3
Categories:
reedy, bird, fantasy,
Form:
Free verse
She comes to me when e’er she will,
When starlight sprinkles my windowsill.
When the dew finds rest upon the grass
She taps upon my window glass.
I go outside to be with her,
To share a moment soft and pure,
But she soon glides away down a wooded lane
And I who follow think I follow in vain.
We amble through the night time woods,
Past curled up ferns and dark monk’s hoods,
Past spiders in their silken weavings,
Long past when night surpasses evening.
I follow her deep into the glen
To the reedy edge of a foggy fen
Where cattails sway in a subtle breeze
And glowworms float in airy ease.
She pauses by a drowsy creek
And turns to me as if to speak,
But saying nothing moves farther ahead
And alights on a nearby milkweed bed.
She bids me listen to a joyful tune
The crickets play beneath a full white moon,
The notes flutter, then fall, gentle and sweet
In dappled moonlight at my feet.
We listen in silent similitude
Afraid to disturb the delicate mood,
Yet soon she starts to converse with me
And I am richer for her company.
We talk about many wonderful things –
About robin’s eggs and butterfly wings.
About caterpillars, elves and gnomes
And where she claims to make her home.
We talk about love and the joy it will bring
And how it can make a lonely heart sing.
I then smile at her but she turns away
And I, left speechless, have nothing to say.
And so we share the passing night
And greet the dawn’s creeping light,
But before the night succumbs to day
She once more starts to glide away.
She lingers near the waking brook
Then disappears in a rocky nook.
Looking in I can see her no more –
She has returned to where she was before.
Morning has come too soon it would seem
And she has left me alone to ponder my dream.
A dream? Perhaps, but real I know
For she had deigned to make it so.
Categories:
reedy, fantasy, love, me, night,
Form:
Rhyme
Pondering Castle Ruins At Dusk
I came upon you near to dusk
watching on the final hill
as modern sculpture, graced stone
calm, slumbering, still.
I wandered through the ghostly rooms
sparely traced by tumbled walls
seeking echoes from soft souls
who coloured life into your walls.
I touched your stone with tender hand
seeking signs of yesterday
a remnant of another time
rains had washed your tales away
Yet something of those times remain
within the spaces of your keep
the wind it sped a reedy tune
and voices murmured slow and deep.
Categories:
reedy, beauty, betrayal,
Form:
Free verse
Written: December 14, 2023, For Ink Empress Contest
________________________________________
Sipping from nature's cynosure duct
as yearning subtly for sweetness
quaint wings of golden glass.
lifelong square keenness
barely seen but loved
drifting nearby
reedy bird
held my
sigh
time
sunset
this winter
it feels peaceful
grasping the instant
sweet infant in my arms
she struck her velvety foot
much giggles brightening the mind
Touched my face with rose-dipped fingertips.
Categories:
reedy, analogy, appreciation, bird, nature,
Form:
Nonet
angst, feelings, immigration, racism, retirement, slam, today,
My Cloud Nine by Didee ©
Eh, get off of my cloud you silly narrow minded fools
I never put out a ‘for rent sign’ and I make up the rules
My fluffy pure white cloud may leak if it becomes too reedy
Many free-loaders climbed today saying they are the needy
I was the original caretaker making this place float upright
It is my inspirational thoughts that bound and kept it tight
As a one-man sanctuary with a (all-time) lease signed My Cloud Nine
Circling here and there with no stops making for little lost time
I, I and I are just ‘we’ and carry on well with no house keeping
It is you, him, her, and other hitch-hikers causing this here meeting
Take all of you off and far beyond and be gone from this man’s space
And find another cloud to 'share' and feed upon from your own human race.
Categories:
reedy, angst, feelings, immigration, racism,
Form:
Free verse
After Derek Walcott’s Poem
We have this in common
Sandy spit
Empty hours to walk alone
Needing to find use
For the forgotten
In the eyes of other people
Washed up
Softens all tones
To sandblasted blue glass
Eyes, drawn out toward sky
The driftwood branch has stars
Or rafts toward uncertain lands
Toward a fire pit nest
where paper cups makes castles
and feathers, a reedy sail
for those whose wings
have fluttered far and long
and settled down
on a temporary, final beach.
Categories:
reedy, loss, nature, places, travel,
Form:
Free verse
Dragonflies are the jewels of the pond.
Fluttering, they land on dewy kissed leaves,
Colors shimmering reflects in the sun.
Their four wings are always catching the sun,
Inspires thoughts of fairies around the pond.
Little nymphs flitting from flowers to leaves.
Emerald spread wings basking on the leaves.
They're magical creatures of air and sun,
Beautiful turns, swoops and zooms above the pond.
Pond's reedy leaves attract sun-catching nymphs.
For Andrea Dietrich's contest, "Introducing Tritina Verse"
Categories:
reedy, fantasy, nature,
Form:
Tritina
Sending the tending to an unfriended ending,
yet somehow suspending from rending a newly offending recommending.
Logotype monotype linotype,
overripe stereotype,
teletyped an unripe heliotype.
Guttersnipe snipe,
stipe snipe ripe,
a wipe type a tripe,
unleash a withering hype.
Dip snip,
nip lip,
slip skip,
rip the apple pip
over a battleship Chip.
Clip,
airstrip,
blip,
scrip,
gyp,
flip,
dip.
Unsip, blue clip,
A warship, weathering stick.
To miche an itch,
to stitch a witch.
Rich a quitch,
Hitch a flitch.
Gabrilowitsch,
the grand son of a *****!
Pitched a ditch to flitch a niche.
Made a rich hitch lich.
The Thia tie thy tried to untie an unshy,
Spied a sny sty,
He ascribed a bribe tribe,
to dib drib, lib and sib.
A death pale,
dwaled and engrailed,
enjailed and bewailed.
The cocktale turned into a,
ginger ale stale.
A hobnail.
A pale kale.
The whale waled
a veil of wail.
The stale air,
railed the quailing sale.
Dipped the snip,
to pip the tip,
and baled the avail,
to the flailed snail.
Attract extract reenact,
saddle backed and subtracted,
the tact the pact
an unmistakable fact.
Swag the unsage,
the wage of the tutelage.
A coffee break
a bit of a cornflake
cupcaked the cake of the devil's flake.
Draked the fake fruitcake,
and hake the jake on the mellow lake.
Mistake the overtake.
A pancake sheik,
cried spake of a toothache.
Ack Ack!
Back, Bootblack Jack.
Pack the Pontiac rack,
sack the Hackensack,
hijack the leatherback.
Offtrack the outback,
rack the sack,
smack the stack,
stickleback the tictack track,
to the umiak Union Jack.
Twack the whack yak sack,
A mystical one eyed zodiac.
Bready a speedy,
deedy the weedy,
Reedy to leedy.
Unheedy indeedy.
Leda, Vida, Theda.
Sketched an etch,
itched a hatch.
So speechless,
breathless,
toothless.
The socialist,
the communist,
the theorist
the terrorist.
Bedded the bedding
in a dreadful beheading.
Weeded the weed,
leading the lead,
tended the teed.
The ready read,
the reedy reeded.
The seedy seeded.
The end is Ending.
Categories:
reedy,
Form:
Verse
it is later than late
shadows simmer like a cold heart
the jukebox plays on
drinking and smoking
it is the jester’s time
den of iniquity
everyone here looking for a score
of some kind
danger lurks inside her faded blue eyes
she doesn’t frighten me
music loud and reedy
a song I don’t know
out of touch
I’m an old country, old rock
kind of guy
blue eyes presses my leg with hers
panic time
jukejoint closes in fifteen minutes
we must choose between reality
and make-believe
I choose make-believe
and press back on her leg
Categories:
reedy, introspection, loneliness,
Form:
Free verse
I saw that elderly man this Sunday
He says he travels to my town everyday
In his 80s he appears feeble
His reedy bones are seeable
This old chap is thin as a stick
I find him so polite, I call him a brick
He looks like a parched tree without fruits
His body tremors and dying his roots
His grey hair looks neat and smart
But his wrinkly face looks swart
He keeps walking at a snail’s pace
Unlike us, he’s not a part of this rat race
He has no one to live for
There is no one he can die for
I don’t know where he goes everyday
I don’t know what is he searching for
Oh old man you’ve outlived your family
You now look older than the hills
You too should depart this life peacefully
You don’t deserve this agony
and desolation anymore
Categories:
reedy, care, day, depression, desire,
Form:
Rhyme
The Ruba’iyat of Créteil Lake – Part Eighteen
Even as the lower rubbed its dazed eyes over Her hillocks
The light-foot Lass of Lahore made her way past the boating docks
Past the Marie’s dank reedy banks over Her heaving breast
Tip-toeing over the complaining boards of Her nose-bridge locks
Hugging a bottle labeled “OMAR” where Her bust cut an arc -
A left-behind lame garden warbler tweeted its dirge dark
While the doe-eyed Lass tilted the bottle at the water’s edge -
Her own secret message to save the Sufi Khayyam from wreck:
“Oh! Illustrious Beacon of the Saljuk Empire!
Pray! Let me so much as I might deign to sing sans lyre!
The WORD is out: Your Eminence’s proscribed by penal mettle:
The Republic’s Procureur Général wants you in pyre!”
“Your humble sister begs your esteemed bardic indulgence:
Two fitful summers gone past we did cross each other’s presence
Me a mere slip of a girl from yon Ghaznavid Empire
Heard the clamorous reed warbler’s Himalayan penance!”
“This bottle with the missive I know the Lady of the Lake
Will to you waft: tidings dire as to keep me awake
Through bitterly biting lonesome nights you stumble and rove:
Take heed! POLICE cycle-brigades have tripled round the lake!”
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2014
Categories:
reedy, allegory,
Form:
Rubaiyat
For J. C. Alldridge
Piccolo and been-throated pibroch
Dilating dimpled hood
Spreading photometric darkroom eyes
Waxing waxing matching
Venomous lip to music's piping lip
O Queen of stung dragon-mouthed Po
Dancing girl of nuanceless ancient reliefs
The apotheosis Brahman curling on the neck
Must you now sink sink
Dread watched
Spineless
Into the winding womb wickerwork
Watching watching pipe-eyed watching
Until you slip
Over the sill of the pipe and the lip
Anathema!
Amorphous piteous anathema!
Amulet of Siva!
Licking the boneless air companionless
Then slithering to lie on the trodden path
Must you have this one last lick
A lick that
Stills the
Unheeding
Child astray
Or ripple tailless
In the reedy gust
To the squat charmer's
Hypnotical pibroch
©: T. Wignesan - Paris, 1957 (from Tracks of a Tramp. Kuala Lumpur-Singapore: 1961; first pub. in "Forum Academicum", University of Heidelberg, 1957)
Categories:
reedy, angst,
Form:
Free verse