Ghost Signs

Walking – graffiti clamours – bang bang bang,
hydraulic hammers drive foundations in,
bolded hoardings cover yawning gaps within.

I search the patchwork sky – escape the clang…
someone’s cell phone delivers a harangue…

Nostalgia Lane, bluestone bricks beneath a bin
flowing butts and wrappers – its urban skin
a palimpsest of sturm und drang;

there, decaying ghostly recollections,
once steady hand and eye, careful balance
etched in time on painted bricks and concrete;

heritage vernacular inflections,
although faded add a playful ambience,
our ghost signs still speak graciously in streets.

Sam issued a challenge to write a Miltonian Sonnet. This is my attempt – there are more over at dVerse. Do visit because there are some fabulous examples.

Form for All: The Librarian, the Poet, and the Snowblower

Shadow Play

Can a shadow offend,
perhaps a shade
when mottled streams and
shady glades you wade,
or drive along
a windy road strobing
through an old growth
forest greenly glowing?

Cameras struggle with
the dark and light,
exposure levels
seek to overwrite;
lo, the quest beckons
for the hallowed grail –
perfect white balance,
visual delight.

And yet these shadows
that may offend some
mean no harm to
precious dispositions
with their dolly carts
and tripods,
and phallic lens
for definition.

I say, they are nought
but motes and dapples;
celebrate instead,
the artful play of shadows.

for

The Poetics of Groundhog Day – Bright Shadow

Aurora

Fire fox merrily skips beneath the night
seeking emeralds in a pool of blue,
bowing deeply to streaming water sprites,
paying gods the reverence they are due.

Green water dragons dance with river prawns
flickering neon in magnetic seams,
Northern lights inspire blushing Southern dawns,
polar nets fishing in the solar streams.

From the heart of sun plasma rises, stares
into the emptiness, electrons dance
with protons, swirling wantonly on flares,
humans watch on, in a mystical trance.

Glowing cosmic beads slip along a string,
magnetic leelines, mythic angel wings.

Peeping Through

Blushing buds peep through the luscious grass,
Her footprints lightly touch the warming earth,
In her hands, an enamelled looking glass;
She touches clouds, skipping in her mirth;
Sunlight dances soft in fine water sprays
Making rainbow magic,  hastening spring,
Pink camellias, floral cabarets
Abundant treasures longer days shall bring,
Flood her mind as her thoughts fly swiftly north
To visions of rain forests meeting seas,
Bold sea eagles hovering back and forth
Above a sacred canopy of trees.
Beneath her feet peep wee pink flowers
Absorb each second of the sun’s short hours.

 

Gloaming

Gloaming – Petrachian Sonnet

Wandering in the gloaming, you and I,
clasping hands, together we are steady
as we jump across a pooling eddy
sea gulls wheel above with their mournful cry.
Violet clouds gleam in the mustard sky
to catch a fly lizard freezes ready,
tongue unfurls, the fly flees in a frenzy,
landing in a craggy tea tree bonsai.
A thin ray of light caught your titian hair,
dark burnished russet flooded through my veins,
your eyes were following the flying gull;
the sun lets out a dying golden flare,
its rosy bloom leaving exquisite stains,
we embrace nostalgia in our silk lull.

Linked to Jingle Potluck Monday and dVerse The Watering Hole

Friday Morning

Snooze, sudoki and soft chatter,
Friday morning calm invisible
drapes in between wheels’ clatter;
the pauses seem quite divisible,
as space between eyebrows expands,
painted eyes lashes butterfly
through windows smeared with dirty hands
steel and leaf in a leaden sky…
soar up to the clouds etched in gold;
turn inside a crowded carriage,
rattling now, faces looking cold
caught in thoughts of pressing bondage,
seeking gaps in the air between
and come to rest in fields of green.

Iris

Beneath the ground, your scented rhizome
Prized throughout the human centuries,
Sweet dreams of rainbows and vaulted domes
Awakening old violet memories.

Your ancestors were carved into beads
Used by cloistered folk to count prayers
To absolve a prince’s crass misdeeds
Engaged in important state affairs.

Yet, once of Isis you reminded us,
A Goddess of the lunar seasons;
Of abundance we were desirous,
We’d pray to you for selfish reasons.

Your roots are still prized for rare perfumes;
Many are transfixed by your soft blooms.

Linked to Jingle Poetry Potluck

By Any Other Name

Soft, your petals catch the play of light,
Sweet, the scent you send into the day,
Pinned on silk gowns swishing in the night,
Your promise is true love; come what may.

Sometimes you grow wild, on rocks and clay,
Bringing smiles of joy in a barren place,
Lost travellers in mazes of dismay
Uncover the heart, in another’s face.

Beauty’s father plucked you once, for grace,
Yet found he lost more than he could bear;
A Beast claimed Beauty, a tight embrace,
The rose grew sharp thorns to clear the air.

What then, of desiring Beauty’s spell?
Set her free and she will love you well.

This sonnet uses Spenser’s rhyme a b a b b c b c c d c d e e.
Published in Frog Croon, Spetember 2011, Issue 8

Country Dreaming

Shall I sit dreaming of bucolic scenes
Where Autumn dresses in her russet gown;
Low sun beams bathe the world in golden sheens
Harvests all brought in, the fields rest in brown;
The sun tracing a lower arc each day,
At night, I’d don a shawl against the chill,
I dream of barns lined with sweet lucerne hay
And the soft swooshing of a water mill
But now we live with electricity,
Factory food on supermarket shelves,
My dreams seem a quaint eccentricity;
Next, they say I’ll be dancing with the elves,
Yet such scenes are deep embedded notions
Of romantic poets and their potions.

#NaPoWriMo 24

Poppies

This poem appears in Frog Croon, May 2011, Issue 4

Tall poppies gently nodding in the breeze
Drinking deeply of the golden sun rays,
Unfurled with hearts of black they feel at ease
Knowing they bring a nostalgic malaise;
A melancholy knowledge of decay,
A yearning for a time only imagined,
To return to sedimentary clay
To grow in a novel world unimagined;
Where rules of gravity were different,
Where porous bodies intermingle freely
Singing harmonies to bring alignment
Between our world and the Court of Seelie.
Crimson poppies offer their sweet treasure
Needing pollination in full measure.

NaPoWriMo #17