If I go with an ache—
honeyed dreams I recall,
the blood moon urging love,
soaring pink over the forest.
We watched its cool beauty
as rusted leaves fell,
~whispering of summer~
a thousand times, the moon sings–
and broken ghost-hearts listen
with almost breaths, embrace
the dark sky’s light poetry
to wake, lingering as flowers,
at peace
Another puente. The Oracle gave me this myth, and perhaps it’s also appropriate for World Mental Health Day.
Moon whispers shimmer
in gossamer dreams
we float star-sprayed with light,
our barque sails to dawn
through blooms of flower clouds
the white mast glides aglow
under golden rays,
and the azure sky is rinsed clean
in the after-morn of summer storms,
the air perfumed with sea salt
and always,
stars and moon voice secret songs
haunting eternity with ghost rhythms
surrounding us with magic,
waking us to if
The Magnetic Poetry Oracle and I collaborated on this sequence for Colleen’s Challenge using the theme “The Night Sky.”
My poem, “Explorers,” is published as one of the responses to Bertram Brooker’s “Figures in a Landscape.” My thanks to editor Lorette C. Luzajic for selecting mine, along with all the other excellent responses. You can read them all here–mine is toward the end.
She is ever young and ancient, too,
mistress, mother, destroyer, divine,
she births the world, but burrows, then weeps
in cold blood darkness, and there she sleeps–
and when she dreams, the flowers bloom
on roots, warm-spun from her honeyed hair,
and ladybugs skitter, scatter, fly
beneath sun-kissed clouds and azure sky.
She is woman, goddess, earth’s true love,
diamond-eyed, rose and chocolate-scented
breast-achy, she nurses–but then sighs–
all that comes, goes, all that lives, yet dies.
An ekphrastic poem for dVerse, where Lillian is hosting and received permission from artist Catrin Welz-Stein to post four images of her work. We are permitted to choose only one of these four images to use as springboard for poetic fancy.
Bitter at after, done with
his red rose lies revealed–
ripping her raw,
till she became wind, water–
a purple storm surging,
crashing on the rocks
~in shadowed mist~
dreams are created,
embracing all the ifs
born of hope—or despair—lingering
like the caress of the sea
in the touch of a salt breeze, recalling
what once was and the words that would never be said.
My message from the Oracle took some work today, but it finally came through, and then a bit of added inspiration from Winslow Homer. Thanks to Jane Dougherty for sharing a fix for the formatting.
The New Bucephalus, Edgar Ende
My poem “A Dream” is up in the Ekphrastic Review’s Challenge using the above painting, “The New Bucephalus” by Edgar Ende. My thanks to editor Lorette C. Luzajic. I’m in good company this time with friends Kerfe Roig and Kim Russell. You can read all of the poems here (mine is near the end).
Horace Pippin, “The Domino Players,” 1943
Thank you to editor Lorette C. Luzajic for including my prose poem, “Homefront” for this challenge based on Horace Pippin’s “The Domino Players.” I really like this painting, and his work in general. The Philadelphia Museum of Art has several of his paintings. He lived just outside of Philadelphia in West Chester, PA.
I’m also thrilled that Jane Dougherty’s poem is the first poem you read here.
Franz Marc, The Dream
Born of ferocious fire clouds—
angel or ghost?
An almost there, like
a trace of perfume lingering
in the indigo night
from bright blooms blanketing fields
in colored harmony
~vivid and haunting~
somehow like a dream–
of verdant paths with deer and ponies,
where we bird-fly over the bluest river
into the secret of when
and what was, and here—
we follow tendrils of sun-songs
to the ancient light of then and if. . . forever.
The Oracle made me work for this puente today. The humidity has lifted, and a mockingbird is putting on a concert in my backyard.
.
Odilon Redon, “The Muse on Pegasus”
In the moments between
the dream hours
she joins my father
in the timeless night–
not asking if this universe
is real or true,
~only that it is~
all I can embrace–
the magic of a laugh,
the sun dancing in
the promise of a new morning,
and the rhapsodic songs of the stars,
lingering.
The Oracle gave me nearly all the words for this puente, so–I just went with it.
Vassily Kandinsky, “Several Circles”
In transit
we wander, seeking
what? Circles
unbroken
form constants, our existence,
balanced symmetry–
light and dark
not opposites, but
shifted hues
shimmering
through time and space, reborn in
stars, flowers, the sea.
For Colleen’s Tanka Tuesday challenge, a shadorma sequence, using synonyms for the words Kerfe chose, transition and harmony. I hadn’t intended to write about circles, but since Kerfe and I seem stuck on them, I suppose it’s not unexpected.
