Welcome to the Frontline.

We read the plaques, the info signs.
We shake our heads.
The facts are plain,
simple words for all to understand.
Life is on the brink.

If a crazed lunatic ran through the building,
shooting his semi-automatic rifle,
cutting down visitors and plants alike,
bullets firing through the glass panes,
peppering the Richmond sky beyond,
how shocking would that be?

We would cower at such danger.

But these words, which we do not disbelieve,
cause us to sigh, how sad,
and wander on at leisured pace through
continents and over islands, tracing
the danger and annihilation of
our benefactors.

Lost amongst the dank leaves,
a moist-feathered robin hops.
His coil of shrill sharp song
corkscrews through the air,
winding around the rare stems
which cling to life.

We watch him, out of place,
in this temple of Lazarus.
Is this the anecdote we will recall?
The plucky bird, attracted by the garden spade,
now caught amongst the dying,
not yet dead.

Welcome to the frontline – humans.

Linking this to OLN at d’Verse Poets where tonight Lisa is hosting.

We visited Kew Gardens this week. The Temperate House holds 10,000 species of plants and displays information on the work Kew is undertaking to save plants on the brink of extinction. It is both fascinating and shocking. Whilst touring the building we saw a robin hopping amongst the foliage.

There is a list upon my fridge …

Photo by Mick Haupt at Unsplash

There is a list upon my fridge, abbreviated notes and cues:
to add some brie, loo rolls too, a bag of spuds, but no more chopped tomatoes please.
And when the larder’s looking bare, stocks are low, and I’m wondering where the basics went,
I lift the magnet from the door and read the scrap of hurried swirls and tell myself,
these words are yours, its just today you’ve used them in a different way.

Shelves may look empty
But behind the stale biscuits
Is a fresh gateaux.

Linking this to d’Verse Poets Pub where Frank has charged us to write a Haibun about writer’s block. This isn’t strictly speaking a haibun as I’ve not used prose for the first section. It’s just the way it came out as I was writing.

Do you take these bricks….?

You’re leaning slightly, skirts a-rustle,
Blowing dust at me.
Am I hungry for a story?
As hungry as can be.

Once promised in a sultry month,
you narrate with care,
your lines were freshly glowing white.
garlands perfumed the air.

You thought the bond was mutual,
pure bliss is what you saw,
’twas written and was deftly signed,
your love for evermore.

But evermore does not exist,
the glow recedes and wanes
with cracks and flakes and broken things.
A different smell pervades.

Care could soon restore my looks
You plead through shuttered eyes,
Unlock the beauty that’s within
And revel in the prize.

Linked to a great photo prompt from Carrie at The Sunday Muse Blogspot.

Equinox

We’ll be as equals, you and I
Flooding our joy across the sky.

A stream of never ending light,
millennia behold the sight
of harvest day then harvest night,
bear witness to our cosmic sign.

Shine bright my love, no more forlorn,
reflect my fire upon your orb,
dusted beauty until the dawn
when passion wanes into sunrise.

The moon has been spectacular over these past few nights, rewarding my insomnia with the sight of my garden washed in its full white light. It was the Autumn Equinox on Wednesday, so when Grace’s prompt to write a Zéjel, which is a centuries old poetry form, clicked into my inbox, I had to give it a try inspired by this celestial phenomenom.

See Grace’s background to the Zéjel and read some wonderful versions at this link :https://dversepoets.com/2021/09/23/poetry-form-zejel/#comment-311196

Dessert Landscape

I have a slice of Dorset dessert on my plate.
Beneath the apple-coloured fields,
rich as folded velvet,
Jurassic layers crumble like biscuit crumbs
into chopped blueberry jelly sea.

Dorset is so delicious, I could eat it!

Prey/Pray.

‘I felt you before I saw you’ he crooned,
as he spun me a line.
Nimbly he wrapped me in gossamer,
‘for you are precious to me’ he whispered,
I spiralled to his charms.
Too late, I realised
I had lingered too long.

As I sat with my morning coffee I watched a spider as it twirled an unfortunate fly, trapped on its web, into a little white cocoon. It was fascinating to watch close up – normally I would run a mile from any spider!

Linking this to d’Verse Poets Pub and Linda Lee Lyberg’s invitation to write a quadrille including the word ‘linger’ https://dversepoets.com/2021/09/20/quadrille-136-lets-linger/

Abdication

The easiest fix, to let the head drop,
And gaze at dead stretched skin,
Shone to what you call perfection.

Ignore the nagging tick beside your ear.
Time is just expense,
Which you think you can afford.

Yet you forget,
you are resting on fragile stuff.
These sticks cut from hearts not yet fully grown.

Each unfolding wresting loose the bolts
you thought would hold for life.
Dust your hands with splinters.

Linking to the Sunday Muse Blogspot and one of Fireblossom’s photo prompts. (http://thesundaymuse.blogspot.com/).

Queen of the Castle

At my feet
white campion and grasses
purr at a stroking wind,
beneath a low belly of grey clouds.
Floating, weightless,
I am queen of the castle.

Once we were all kings and queens.
With torn sheet cloaks,
And make-shift thrones.
Castles rimmed with salty moats.

Caught within the frame,
a boomerang curve corrals the sea.
Screen-shine on the water
wettens the ripples,
smooths the lower pasture fields.

Unfamiliar, yet long-known.
This air, this sea, this light,
these Dorset hills that blanket me
to sleep at night.
I am bone worn to shape,
hurtling through the years
and falling here back at
Golden Cap.

Dorset will undoubtedly be featuring more and more in my posts. We are loving exploring the walks and countryside in this beautiful county. My family often holidayed here for one precious week a year when I was a child. Gritty sandwiches and bracing sea were the order of the day, and, of course, chipping out little ammonite fossils from the rocks. I’m linking this to dVerse Open Link Night (https://dversepoets.com/2021/09/16/open-link-night-300-september-live/)

Yah de Yah

Unsplash -Erik Mclean.

‘So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.’

‘Yah de yah’ Esther shook her head as she turned the radio off.
‘Excuse me, young lady, I was listening to that’ her father shook his newspaper in her direction and scowled.
‘Really Dad? Since when did you listen to Poetry Corner?’
‘Now then Esther, Dad, let’s be having no arguments. Not today.’ Her mother’s voice, always the voice of reason.
A log shifted in the fireplace, sending a shower of red flakes onto the marble hearth. Spurts of flamelight glanced onto a photograph propped on a small table. It was a portrait of a young man in military uniform.
Her mother’s voice caught in a sob as she looked at the photograph and said softly:
‘He did his duty though didn’t he?’

Very late response to Ingrid’s prompt at d’Verse Poets to write 144 (or less) words of prose incorporating a line from William Blake’s poem ‘The Chimney Sweeper:’ : ‘So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm’

Thick Medulla

She wound it,
over, under, tug, tug, tug.
Knotted to a perfect
suffocating noose.
The midwife’s blade too blunt to sever
such a tie.
And though to all
it seemed no harm was done,
in truth old knuckles
kept their strangled hold.

Linked to Carrie’s prompt at The Sunday Muse http://thesundaymuse.blogspot.com/