Ocher Poems | Examples

color

Day breaks in shadow
A silky grey moonlight fades
In an ocher mist

Opal

Observable fire flashes
Oceanic at times
Opaque reflective flair
Ocher pigments inside
Openhandedly gave
Opulent fashioned ring
Offering it with heart

A Very English River

This woodland stream could be a small English river,
it dibbles and dabbles, it meanders, and has the air
of an old water way, one that never saw the need
to rush or gush.

The small ripples pace themselves; a sepia rivulet
that tugs at a nutrient silt, carrying it down gently
to green pastures.
In autumn the fallen leaves add ocher flotillas
that sail into valley mists, never to return.

April showers refresh the brook,
it waltzes between tufted hillocks,
glides almost giddily between sky and earth.

If the path of the water flow has a name
it is known only to grazing cattle,
that drink of it,
and the meadow lark
that hovers high above the little beck
to sing of its native wandering ways.

Slot Canyon

The ooze of earth and water, rivulets of mud,
Moves slowly, then faster, as rain pushes its mass.
Both water and earth mix in this massive great flood,
As it's trapped and rises in a slot canyon's pass.

As it inches up the wall's of Zion's great rocks, 
It swirls and heaves like the rage of an ogre.
The tightening 'V''s, so like a corset, which blocks
The rising tide in shades of brown and ocher.

The warnings are clear, and the dangers are present,
With a message to all, "Avoid the desert slot", 
Especially when heavy rains are recent.
It is surely not where I'd like to be caught.

A Portrait of Love

for Corredo

Her round eyes are like singers and actors
sing songs and perform
her lashes and brows
raindrops of sadness
preventing it from penetrating the mind
her soft, straight nose is on a snowy highway
her ruddy cheeks are the color of frontier ocher
her lips are smooth as the peel of an unripe peach,
there is a feeling of swelling that is not painful
her hairs are "S"  to one side
                                other side, "I"  like a falling falls
without fear,
cover her shoulders
her shoulders, trained by swimming,
point toward the sky
her neck is neither thin nor thick
supporting her forehead
Above all
She has  all things about Love:
saying the riposte of
passionate and strong waves.

Tides

Sparkling shimmering brightened by sun
waves encroaching, receding as one
revealing a flash of color not meant
to be there by waveform or ocean’s intent 

tumbling among obsidian’s ocher dust
for tens if not hundreds of years to adjust
without warning or purpose of telling their story
lie shimmering in wave-worn flashes of glory

polished in water smoothed by sand
frosted translucent rubbed by the hand
of time and weather with gentle affection
producing a glass gem by natural selection

buried in darkness beneath crashing thunder
the sea hides secrets below waves and under
heavy wet sand where the silence not shared
with surface of water upon sand bars bared

to mark the orbits of passing starlight 
over distances unimaginable might
subtle to sculpt the rising tide
along night beaches as slipping waves ride

locked in place and stored deep
some treasures the ocean chooses to keep
one day perhaps release another gem
waxing moon, the seas and tides decide when

Yellow

I gaze at a saffron sunset
as a tawny owl sails overhead,
while yellow sunflowers feel threat
until evening prayers are said.

The flaxen fields and amber plains
reflect the xanthous of fading sun.
A copse of vivid ocher trees wanes
awaiting a primrose moon to stun.

Canary daisies soundly sleep
and dream beside a citrine lake
while glorious goldenrods peep
gaily as fallow bucks’ antlers shake.

Mary’s marigolds shine their best,
a nankeen horizon fails to arrest.
Soon the sun will propose its rest
and slip below the mountain’s crest.

Eyes Like Yours Set All Apart

Set smoke, so sweet, so delicate
Something fuliginous, so intricate
Ocher bronze is all that I can see
You're beautiful, a dime to me
Spheres of the purist maple syrup
Sums them up; affectionately
Flowing through my heart, forever over my soul
Suspensions of golden medallions, never to control
Carob or chocolate cold never be
Subbed; for your lens looking at me
Caliginous, foreboding, but never forbidden
Like a chestnut mare; not broken, or ridden
My devotion is firmly planted, in your Earthly visions
You absolutely slay me with your warm decisions
Whimsical; they are made of fine mahogany
Eye's like yours set all apart; yet set me free

The Marsh View

My parents moved recently–
a nice place, marsh view,
plenty of trees and walking trails
a nice big kitchen for Scottish breakfasts.
Their deck upstairs looks out 
on the marsh water shining in the sun.
The aquatic landscape broken only
by the stilted legs of hungry herons.
The floorboards no longer creak
beneath my ocher footsteps
and I feel like a visitor here–tourist
Then I wonder, how much of myself
was left in those creaking planks?
How much of my life is threaded 
in their wooden veins?
Perhaps this new deck doesn’t creak
only because I’ve shed the weight
of my childhood, the cloak 
of memory–disrobed and I am refreshed
like new bamboo shoots in spring.

Rooms

Ocher and quince wads
pack gaps in particleboard walls.
Yellow newspapers underlay linoleum.
The apartment is smeared by nicotine
When it rains, a paper-Mache atlas of a blotched sky
can be read on the ceiling.

The window-sill slants, he dares not lean out.
He listens to street fights; imagines gore
seeping into inky basement wells.

Saturday nights bleed into Sunday.  Sometime
amid the gray hours he decides to leave,
to wander vomit blitzed alleys
to search a doorstep and steal a Sunday paper,
then he returns to the grimy room
to read of better places
where better crimes get clean away.

He has a girlfriend, one he sees only once a week,
they sit on the narrow bed reading the news.
She tells him that her apartment has thin walls,
that at night strangers scratch upon them
as if writing to her.

Finally He lands a job in a hotel as a night porter.
His allotted room is pure white and sterile,
more a cell than a living space.
If he puts the light on, all that white hurts his eyes,
in time he gets used to it.  His mind slowly
sheds layers of brick-dust and smudged print.

Heat

Sidewalk hot, 
you could fry an egg. 
Arizona summer heat, Phoenix roast factory. 
Sweat pouring off my brow like Noah's flood. 

Sky, light turquoise, tweaked into a 
sun radiant reflective furnace. 
Shimmering down alleyways in unison with overburdened air conditioners. 
Mirage pools in the distance ethereal, 
wavering on blistering roads. 

Sounds are deadened by oppressive scorching. 
Dogs panting with white flecks of drool, 
sizzling on asphalt. 
Blow dryer wind chafing my skin, 
hard walking in this dry heat sauna, 
cotton ball mouth and a raging thirst. 

An old man sitting on a weather-beaten porch spits ocher tobacco waste on a dead lawn. 
Penetrating blue eyes nestled in a wrinkled brow, 
he whistles a forgotten tune in the oppressive heat. 
"Hey, you!" he calls to me, 
"get in the shade before you fry your brains." 

He's holding a cold lemonade, 
dewdrop dribbling on a crystal glass. 
Ice jingling against the sides in a mesmerizing way. 

I lick my chapped lips, 
he pours me a cold one. 
We wait on that shaded porch, 
talking about life, love, and the way it goes. 
As that big red ball starts to creep into the cradle of night.

We Paint Our Caves

Once lit by flickering torch light 
with animal tallow mixed with ocher
daubed on subterranean rock walls
now lit by streetlights or LED headlamp
slashes of spray paint and magic markers 
splattered on concrete bridge abutments,
boxcars, or walls of tenement ghettos,
but the message is the same
we were here.

Tamarack

A forest soldier still armored in golden chain
guards the Canadian Shield from brooding vines and
                                                            horizons gray
In November's wind, it holds its yellow needles
             like comrades clasped in feeble arms of wood

This tree, an x-ray of late autumn's soul, glows
              with its ocher pins,
              deaf to bids of meddling snow.
Soft sounds, these falling fibres
               beating war drums
               'gainst an early winter foe

Protester at the gate of cold
      tamarack's ramshackle yellow
As shouts of autumn's glory 
                                         still




Poem composed 2020
Revised: February 1/2022

Terracotta Ocher

Orangey,
burnt almond hues
color
the horizon;
as Sol's chariot
like a spent
ember,
glows amber;
inking
infinite
ice crystals
with a coppery
terracotta ocher;
as
it arches and sets.

Raking Leaves

The tines of the rake
comb through a dispersing tumble.
Ocher clumps form random hillocks,
most slip through the iron teeth
dancing drunkenly away.

I was called into the rushing air.
Physical work with the dead and dying
is a ‘calling’ isn’t it?

The newly deceased keep falling.
Maple leaf bones crackle underfoot.
I scoop their remains,
brush an autumnal cerecloth,
shake the dead into swirls of afterlife.

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