She stepped lightly
Amid the golden reeds
Glowing, this nymph of
Riparian leisure --
Barefoot and scantily
Covered breasts, whose
Jutting pavilions twice
Blessed swayed and
Swelled as the marsh
Tried breathe, exhaled even
Deeper saturating its own boggy
Savors, fixated then
Upon her naked thighs
Exposed for the silk
Curtain had parted revealed
Luscious droplets clinging, slipping,
Slippery sliding my heart a slush
Of primitive desire --
Written: November 15, 2025
*******************
I am no feeling thing—
a moribund pastiche
of dulled mornings,
threadbare in soul,
writhed into silence.
No reason.
No why.
Just the torque of transience
grating against my sacred sapidity,
a palimpsest of vanished warmth.
Someone—
pinch me past this paucity.
I need your touch,
your rubicund ripple
to resile my wilted mettle.
Let your finger feel
be my panacea,
a seraphic catharsis
to evanesce this numb imbroglio
where even grief feels distant.
Come—
at your behest,
I will abase my hubris,
prowl through the seraglio
of memory’s panoply,
and rake through the riparian dusk
for one scintilla of you.
Let me feel again—
not the panoply of pain,
but the luster of being,
the emollient ache of presence,
the dulcet burden of love.
Written: November 05, 2025, for contest Sponsored by: Hilo Poet
****************************
He ruled with a rakish grin ... a slack scythe in his sanguine fist—
A pharaoh of spurious gloat ... redolent of lard and treacle,
His laws ratified in rapture ... festooned the sacred with spit.
A seraglio of skeuomorphs ... hailed his wondrous fashion sense—
The riparian fields sank ... in soaked squalor and dysania,
He wore a nimbus of stink ... a stygian sherpa to dire fate.
In his sesquipedalian bragging ... the soul of land grew slack—
Each boast is a blur, each law ... a grieving gasp of suction,
Even the seraphic ibis flinched ... its wings dimmed by his shadow.
With tales of Siamese stars and stew ... he won over the jury—
Though the slack-jawed and gaunt group ... gnawed on serendipity bones,
There was no spark ... just the sizzle of sand in a dying sun.
Now his tomb lies amid a cold dune ... decked with dysenteric myths—
A janiform relic of zeitgeist and treason ... stripped of all zest,
The sovereign ruin ... no ripple, no ravel, no rove of resile.
Seen as a collection of spare parts
swimming in close formation
neither fish nor fowl
from a southern hemisphere nation
sewn together as if torn asunder
the amphibian antipodean
from way Down Under
is the odd-looking bottom-feeding
no muss nor fuss
otter-footed beaver-tailed
egg-laying duck-billed platypus
the males of which are venomous
an excellent swimmer
whenever it dives
it closes its ears nose and eyes
altho' a riparian carnivore
electroreception is how it survives
"There's a river meandering through the mind,"
older than the Englishmen who raised a bridge
over its Constitution, a nude Indian sped away
from a warring Englishman behind
absconding by canoe to an adjacent isle
but smallpox caught the indie afore ammunition
"There's a river meandering through the mind,"
that witnessed the grapes of wrath in '37
and suffered its wine, the black potential rebelled
against the clear minority who had signed
emancipation letters without intent
ergo, cars with bodies went flying upon the riparian spine
"There's a river meandering through the mind,"
leaning on treasonous city hearts, wrinkling under the trebled
degrees of island sun, chuffing at progressiveness
and how the colour schemes lightly redesigned
black power free, it seems, walks unfettered to its banks
carrying tackle, tiki-torches, tourists, a picnic, and gun
Swimming in the blind; feeling by electricity
Puddin found her without ever eying; the food he was relying
Their connection developed slowly; for neither found the other clutch
They shifted emotional transmissions; with no clutch
Twirling into a whirlpool of affectionate electricity
Never once expecting to find a mate worth relying
Surveying a riparian bank; of safety relying
She mothered his eggs; of three in the clutch
Now, a sentry of protection for his loves electricity
Back hunting with electricity, in he; Tritinas' relying, a devotion so clutch
thoughts lick at my consciousness
distracting me from the warm embrace
of the colour pallet unfolding
I stare with myopic eyes at the kaleidoscope
endeavouring to discern the demarcation
of the edge of each shade
naming them as though they are listed on a colour chart
displayed at the local hardware store
but as soon as I have one splash of tint pinned down
it fades to be replaced by a more pleasing explosion of colour
a child’s toy impatiently twirled
a rainbow snipped into a multitude of shapes
in never to be repeated patterns
like an uxorious husband
it enfolds the evening sky in its loving embrace
its fleece soft fingers exploring
lulled into a unison of consent
with a barely perceptible rush of contentment
a slight sibilant sigh issues
memorialising daylight
clinging to the fringes of observation
the scene depicts its titular character
of moral decay
the riparian area jealously guards its supremacy
as hydrophilic plants are robbed of their splendour
in a final display of defiance
alluvial fans buffet against the offing
recombobulating
the natural order of Chaos:
The Great Deep of ancient mythology
The River
The swirling stream in slow eddies flows along,
In bright sun flecked ripples the Grey Heron wades.
Where Water Coltsfoot, Alder and Birch belong
A swift kingfisher darts from the dappled shade,
Its blue cloak’s flash in the riparian glade.
And so beyond our powers for us it seems
To recreate Natures most alluring themes
And to imitate her wonders such as these,
That which simple Nature will create with ease.
Barry Stebbings
Oct. 2020
Brother
Riparian observers watch waters pass
left behind, huddled in loss
our tears added to the flow
memories blazoned in our mind
with each tenuous gasp
we pound the bare earth
love and loss mingle with shock
remember
how could I forget
he’s my brother
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