I should like to take Bitter Rattles
As in their own right Brazen battles …
Intensely, The Speaker is flowing,
Whether or not with eyes glowing;
Also riotously, he is thinking
And as riotously blinking,
A nearby child to start yellowing
And into its shell burrowing;
Panicked sows not farrowing,
For as long as he isn’t mellowing
And down issues narrowing,
His forehead oddly furrowing …
Visibly, it is one drying up,
The Badly Thirsty with a glass cup.
In the mirrors
are farrowing
the convenient truths
the conniving lies ...
Mirrors steal
souls and return
ghosts,
steal pure saps
and return smoke ...
Mirrors are evil
and selfish ... restrain
the beauty of others and maintain
in seclusion ...
Show ugliness and activate
disbeliefs ...
Mirrors are metaphorical,
are puzzles ...
They shatter truths,
spread lies ... no
mirror realities but
assumptions ...
Mirrors are illusionists,
Wizards magicians,
cultivate a living in cheering
noses and distorting images ...!
Which mirror do you say, my mirror ...!?
up a steep and narrow road
reach the tops
wilderness reclaims a verge
of wintery snags
land juts and tilts
hauls out
lays treeless
clumps and hags
pitch up stricken soil
heap above the miry troughs
loud the heartbeat
nearer to feral thought
then any mouth or ear
swale and quag dawdle
appear to seep listless
no
every bog tunnels shrouded
to fetch up the feckless
harsh and gorsy
heather treading low
the moors mark nothing
only a head of gnashing wind
a whipping dinosaurs tail
blear and chill
bites and grapples
a stone-tusked marl
crofts under
tangles of un-spun fleece
in barb and thistle
sheep piss in running rivulets
thread through
mizzle-pecked rocks
inscribed
by whatever tortures the air
ravens picket grit edges
wings beating back the below
primal caws that lift and speak
for the standing stones
their harrowing
lime-cuffed history
before light founders deeper
black anvils appear
in the lowering
a scant anchoring
a bare farrowing
shorn and scoured aloft
by miles of orbiting
beauty
twenty years later
son sends pictures
of moors long traipsed
the sky in my phone howls
As dawn starts to streak across the sky
heralding in the new born day.
Feisty rooster already perched on the wall
giving forth with all his might, he crows.
Sleepy hens, ducks and geese scat for worms.
Low moos emitting from the milking parlour
mingling with the sucking sounds of machines
as they gather the rich creamy milk in containers.
Banging of impatient hooves from the shire horses
hungry for their grain, tossing heads and stamping,
loud neighs and whinnies fill the early dawn.
Soon they will be at work ploughing and farrowing fields.
Farmhouse door opens smell of eggs and bacon wafting,
farmer's wife emerges carrying pails heavy with slops.
As she nears the pigsty the grunts and squeals grow
barging, pushing as they search for tasty scraps.
A caterwaul of noise from the rookery deafening,
as they wheel and spin around the yard thieving.
Slowly as the animals return to the sweet meadows
life settles back to normal, until tomorrows dawn.
written 09/15/2013
contest Nature
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