Suite Ste. Luce (1 & 2)
1
Black backed gulls,
nature’s alarm clocks,
waking the seaside
with their glaucous rattle.
High tide? Low tide?
We have drifted on our life raft
far from the grasping hands
of the city clocks.
Gulls dine on the beach.
Day’s rhythm all at sea.
2
6 am? 7 am? 8 am?
What do they mean?
The planet’s slow revolution?
This sun arc sketched in its stretch of sky?
Salt spray combing seaside fingers
through a young girl’s hair.
A man in a red boat, fishing.
House of Dreams
1
The clematis unfolds
bruised purple on the porch.
Jazz piano:
beneath the black
and white hammers
of ivory keys,
old wounds crack open.
A flight of feathered notes:
this dead heart
sacrificed on the lawn.
I wash fresh stains
from my fingers
with the garden hose.
2
The evening stretches out
a shadow hand.
I feel my heart
squeezed like an orange
by long, dark fingers.
Somewhere,
the whitethroat
trills its guillotine
of vertical notes.
I flap my hands in the air.
They float there,
white butterflies,
amputated
in sunlight’s
net.
3
The light fails
fast, I hold up
shorn stumps
of flowers
for the night
wind to heal.
The pale magnolia
bleeds into summer:
white petals
melting on the lawn
like snow.
Sparrow sings
an afterlife
built of spring
branches.
4
Pressed between
the pages of my dream:
a lingering scent;
the death of last
year’s delphiniums;
the tall tree
toppled in the yard;
a crab apple flower;
a shard of grass
as brittle
as a bitter tongue
at winter’s
end.
5
A leaf lies down
in a broken
corner
and fills me
with a sudden silence.
I revise
our scrimshaw history
carving fresh tales
in the ivory
of new found bones.
6
A vixen
hunts for my heart.
She digs deep
at midnight
unearthing
the dry teeth
you buried
from my borrowed
head.
Click here to hear Roger read this poem on Anchor.
House of Dreams
Joy
Such joy in small things:
a task finished,
the old month ended,
a new month begun.
Such joy in the acorn:
a thought planted in the mind
and gradually growing,
root, trunk, and branch.
Such joy in those first green shoots
thrusting up from dead-leaf mold
to renew themselves, reborn –
as this year’s hollyhocks.
Such joy in the surge of spring birds:
robins marching on the lawn,
passerines and song birds returning,
ducks and geese at ice’s edge.
Such joy to reach out,
to stand beneath leafing boughs,
to watch beauty’s youthful feet
how they can dance to cheer ageing eyes.
Moment
St. Patrick’s Day
So soft, so subtle, this moment,
when land and sea reach out
and touch each other,
sea hand offered for the land
to raise up and kiss.
The Equinox draws near.
This is the moment when sun and moon,
day and night are equal.
It is the moment when the world
seems to stop, then moves again
in another direction,
from winter’s darkness into daylight
and the spring’s delight.
And still I live in hopes to see
the land of my birth once more,
the land of my fathers
where my father and mother met,
the land where I first saw daylight,
felt the land reach out to the sea,
felt the joy of the sun-licked sea kiss,
saw daffodils dance on the shore,
and swans swimming on the sea.
“And still I live in hopes to see…
Swansea Town once more.”
Hope
In the half-light, on my evening walk,
the first pale-green spears of spring
stuck out their tongues
from the lips of leaf mold
and dark earth to mock me.
“Back home,” they said, “the daffodils
are in full bloom. In Ireland
the shamrock refuses to surrender.
It will not be trampled underfoot.”
“But this is my home,” I replied.
“Believe: and spring will come,”
the earth cried out.
“La paciencia todo lo alcanza –
patience achieves everything.”
The darkness deepened. Night came on.
But the sun still shone within my heart,
and filled me with hope.
Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
Hope.
Twisted
Sometimes we twist ourselves into knots.
We double-think our thoughts,
put our feet in the wrong hole in our jeans,
slide our socks on backwards,
put our shirts on inside -out.
Poor twisted mortals,
we have made up our minds that all is well,
that everything is for the best
in the best of all worlds,
but we are not candid with each other
and sometimes we are so twisted
we cannot see the truth
even when it is staring at us from the mirror.
Alas, my front tooth is chipped.
My hairline is receding.
My whiskers are turning as grey
as my thinning hair
that has already lost its curl
and now falls straight forward
in the Julius Caesar cut
that belies the closeness
of the Ides of March.
Mallards
They flew twice around the house, then settled in on the snow. Not a pond in sight. Six of them: beautiful. The snow was fairly fresh and they sort of swam through it, looking very clumsy. Between low light, fly screens, and dirty winter windows, the photos aren’t great. But what fun. This is the best way to shoot things: with a camera.
On Being Welsh
On being Welsh in a land ruled by the English
Dydd Dewi Sant Hapus
I am the all-seeing eyes at the tip of Worm’s Head.
I am the teeth of the rocks at Rhossili.
I am the blackness in Pwll Ddu pool
when the sea-swells suck the stranger
in and out, sanding his bones.
Song pulled taut from a dark Welsh lung,
I am the memories of Silure and beast
mingled in a Gower Cave.
Tamer of aurox, hunter of deer,
caretaker of coracle,
fisher of salmon on the Abertawe tide,
I am the weaver of rhinoceros wool.
I am the minority,
persecuted for my faith, for my language,
for my sex, for the coal-dark of my thoughts.
I am the bard whose harp, strung like a bow,
will sing your death with music of arrows
unleashed from the wet Welsh woods.
I am the barb that sticks in your throat
from the dark worded ambush of my song.
Click here for Roger’s reading.
On Being Welsh
Light
Striving onwards to the light
I don’t need a ladder
nor an Aladdin’s Lamp
to transport me upwards,
not to stardom
but to the sun and stars
that wait, day and night,
outside my window.
Prince of Mirth,
soon to be Lord of Light,
I will wear my hibiscus crown
for a short time,
but with joy and pleasure,
a treasure I will treasure
until the natural end
when stars, sun, and crown
come tumbling down,
leaving me alone,
naked, yet clothed in,
and surrounded by,
light.
Click here for Roger’s reading.
Light.
Hold Fast
On days like these,
the center must hold,
but not just hold,
it must writhe and strive
to live longer, be stronger,
to hold together so that the periphery
understands that it too is at the center
of an extended web of life
that contains us all,
you and me,
past and future generations,
in a great chain of being alive
and knowing that yes, we are here,
we are, at heart, really only one,
and totally unique,
is spite of the sameness
that sometimes surrounds us
as time’s spider-web
unravels, oh so fast, so slow,
and yet still we are here,
and still the center holds.
Click here for Roger’s reading.
Hold Fast
rogermoorepoet 