Category: Nature

Golden fruits ~ poem

There are golden fruits upon my tree,
I feed the moths with their sweetness.
At night their tongues unfurl with ripeness,
their eyes transfixed by flickering light.
The darkness of plum against the white
of moon.
Succulence encased in polished skin.
Pierce it. Drive your being within.
Dive into the darkness and suck
the opulence of night.

Mending the ways

He is the last to come inside, always.
His trousers torn and soaked
from lashing rain he barely noticed,
as he bent into the wind, pulling weed
from ditches, clearing tracks, mending
the old, worn ways.
He is last to come inside, always,
and the first to smile, laugh off
the rain from his beard.

The Craft ~ poem

Life is what she nurtures,
gently coaxing each green shoot,
persuading growth, suggesting verdant spread
towards the sun; stimulating sudden flights
of fancy.  New shoots erupting, buds bursting.
"Gently now, no rush," she whispers.

She tends them lovingly each one,
their every need anticipated,
watching, waiting for that perfect moment
for that subtle sign
of ripeness.  Then plucking
leaves, one by one - 
just enough, no more, than what will make
a potion, strong enough to ease an ache;
to heal a wounded heart.

Heat wave ~ poem

Sometimes the skies
do not open for weeks.
They sulk,
petulant and brooding.
Below, in the vast swirling delta of dust,
the skin cracks, contorts,
dry as a pumice rock.
The swifts have arrived
startling the air
like fire-crackers.
Or the weird pulses of electro-static
that scientists say
can appear as a sudden eruption
from absolute nothing
defiantly searing the vacuum.
But though it seems
they might live off motums
of light and dust
for decades, without thirsting,
the swifts are dying.
Their ragged bodies wither back
into the ether
one by one.
It’s the purest truth, that fire and water
cannot mix.
But still, we carry on, 
as though it were a matter
of taste, or a pleasing myth.
A twisted tale we tell in the half-light
to wide-eyed children, thirsting
for a shiver of fear.
But the birds return each spring
in smaller streams.
Smokestacks pierce the membrane of the sky
and pavements bake, windows heave, 
voices shrivel and die.
Dust drives us home, choking the light.
And how we wish
we had slowed down, turned back, 
before the swifts took flight.

Expecting ~ poem

This poem germinated in my head while walking through a wildflower meadow with a pregnant friend: 

Laurie leans over the meadow bridge,
sensing new life in the peat-dark depths
of dyke and ditch,
like the soft magnetic pull 
of gravity.
She stoops, crouching, palms outstretched.
She cradles life in both hands now
and feels at rest, 
under the widening sky.
She smiles.  The sky shifts.
She heavy sighs,
looks up, expecting, then turns aside.
But her feet sink deeper into the dark peat
and I hope that she is swelling with joy.

Child sleeping on rock

Camomile sleeping.
The slip of her wrist
between cheek and stone.
The rock, unencumbered by her shadow,
or the weight of bones,
listens only to the slow creep
of lichens
and the drowsy drone
of honeybees.
Her dream
 is dirt-red ponies 
 under a starless night
 Unyoked, untethered to the light
 of day.
 White breath swirling in the quiet dim
 of some half-distant memory,
 when they - and every living thing -
 moved unburdened, wed only
 to the inter-play 
 of instinct and gravity.