The summer has thickened,
it has turned the hare into a dervish,
the raccoon to a pantomime villain,
made mice sing in the beaks of owls.
The woods are bare now
trees rattle, grackles cackle,
blue Ice chimes in the deep freeze.
Witches flirt and flit
They have skeleton corsets,
they ride upon racks of lamb.
Their mousy, grey moon petticoats
are tattered by thorns.
By December the land crunches
under tread, the snow creaks
like a an unearthed catacomb.
Reckless children are lost
In the rumors of dark folktales.
The year turns, tinder burns,
lovers remember an inner climate
where limbs blush
when kissed by a kindness
as soft as sunlit rain.
Now and then, and yet again,
clouds circle a bright fanlight
of sky.
Seasons return only to sail
on by.
Categories:
fanlight, poetry,
Form: Free verse
She was a barn find,
her figure painted on the bare cedar plank wall
below a fanlight.
The sun over decades had turned her into a phantom,
a patina parboiled into the timbers.
Her painted colors now flecks in the mottle.
She was once a farmer’s daughter,
or an old love recreated, etched by light
and deepened by shadows into imperceptibility.
Her history is sun-washed away.
Her bonnet and long dress of an age
now hung upon times façade.
I wanted to own her, keep her
as someone else’s memory maybe.
There was no way of course,
old barn finds are out of time,
far from any of the rushing day’s we inhabit.
This treasure was buried too deep
to take to any home, it had become priceless
the way a great mature oak tree is beyond price
until the charming engines of nature
claim it for their own.
Categories:
fanlight, poetry,
Form: Free verse
Awoken from fitful sleep, too uncomfortable to resume
Stifling heat prevailing one morning in early June
Through dawn's weakly strained golden haze
Fresh air my lungs desperately craved
To reach the front door, I descended the stairs
With door ajar, cooler air, under a fanlight glaze
My attention was alerted to warbling of a lonesome bird
One continuous note distinctly suspended, as in mid air
Uplifted my soul, as another bird's rendition I heard
With one accord, in duality, birds pitch perfect paired
Heralding in unison further bird answering calls
Culminating chorus of blackbirds, larks and song thrush thralls
Chirruping in octaves, as though orchestral blendings
Glorifying their earthly sojourns in joyous renderings
Listening, I stood in deep contemplation
As all industrial noise was still in cessation
All life in perpetuity as from centuries before us
I then realised, I too had been called by
the BIRD'S DAWN CHORUS
Categories:
fanlight, inspirational, june,
Form: Free verse