Comment: The poetry flows. But if I publish it here, I cannot use it in competitions and there are many around right now.
So, instead of a poem in words – a poem in colors and lines. I have portrayed several of my acquaintances and friends in the flower faces. Luckily, I am such a terrible artist that you will be unable to recognize yourselves! So choose one you like – and pretend that it’s you.
I hope this painting will cheer your day and bring some happiness and sunshine to you wherever you are.
In the gathering autumn shadows summer flares as bright as the berries adorning the Mountain Ash.
Beads of blood, they hold late evening light, as do the Black-eyed Susans growing wild beneath my window.
Rain wet, wind swept some nights, yet still they glow with their bottled sunshine.
Fairy lights, Christmas garlands, ash rosaries will circle another tree, enlightening wrapped presents, lighting up the vacant crib waiting for that little child, soon to be still-born.
Comment: Poetry is where you find it. The inspiration for today’s poem came from the Poem of the Week in The Guardian. Inspiration, I found it in two places – 1. the photograph at the head of this blog and 2. in the analysis of the poem, not in the poem itself. The twilight of this autumn world is indeed wonderful.
A new world is born when two people kiss. The hummingbird sips at the hollyhock’s lips. Bee enters the blossom and, sated, comes out. A butterfly perches, flutters its wings. The sun enters a cloud: radiance is born. Silver linings morph to gold. The sun’s needle stitches the world together. Oh to be a part of Eden, Paradise born anew, in the moment when lip meets lip and the tongue is a twister, touching down. Two hearts a-whirl, their world aflame. Their world reshaped, new shapes now born. Wild flowers swaying in an age-old dance. Life’s journey renewed, not always by chance.
Go deep into yourself. Search for the secret fountain, the well with the sacred waters that renew, replenish, and flow like sunlight. Rest by its verdant banks. Here you can find the self you thought you had lost.
Here, angels take wing and songbirds sing. Telephone calls, e-mails, social media, all such worldly things, lack meaning.
Rest awhile. The universe knows you. Permit it to once again make friends with who and what you are, what you were, what you will always be, your eternal spirit known, cossetted, comforted, and loved.
Your curriculum vitae no longer matters. What matters is the heart of you, that gold mine hidden deep within. Here lies the mold of shining gold that will enrich your soul, renew your life, and gift you ever-lasting treasures.
“With freedom, flowers, books, and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy?” Oscar Wilde
Yesterday I bought my beloved some flowers. I searched among the bunches in the supermarket to find some that were not full blown but ready to spring from bud to blossom. I had the freedom to buy and with it the freedom that comes from having a little bit of money to spare for those frivolities that keep love alive at any age.
As for books, I read them and I write them, and sometimes they write me, and sometimes I can tell the difference, and some times I can’t. “What is this life, if full of greed we have no time to sit and read. Or when we lay awake at night, we don’t have time to think or write.”
Then there is the moon. “Please let the light that shines on me, shine on the one I love.” An old sea-farers’ song also sung by the beloved left behind on the home shore. There are few things as fascinating as a garden in the moonlight. Delightful too are night flowers blossoming beneath a full moon. “Boys and girls come out to play, the moon is shining as bright as day. Leave your pillows and leave your sheets and join your playfellows in the streets.”
So there you have a recipe for perfect happiness. Freedom from need, cash for frivolities and flowers, moonlight in which to serenade one’s beloved, and a book in which to record the recipe and keep it fresh in mind – add them one by one, stir them gently, plant them – and may perfect happiness blossom for you, too.
Is it a silken purse made from the pig’s ear of its seed pod, or just a single seed excreted by an incontinent bird?
Its bruised evening-sky hues stretch their emperor’s imperial purple all too thin. In the late summer sun it swallows one errant bee in its leviathan mouth.
Sole survivor, from a score of flowers that once climbed the seven foot, eight foot stalk to sway in the wind, it stands on guard against fall cold and winter’s snow.
Comment: I didn’t like the ending to the earlier version, so, when it came to reading it, I rewrote it first instead. I much prefer this version. Apologies to those who read the earlier words.
Words grow like flowers, invasive, cruel, beautiful, cutting, and when cut, they wither and fade, just like flowers. Catch them while you can, I say. Catch them, hold them tight, press them to you heart, for time is voracious and will soon devour them, swallowing them down in the black holes of forgetfulness, carelessness, and memory loss. Shine a light on your words. Underline them, grace them with stars, think about them, carefully. And remember, the word once spoken or written can never, ever be recalled.
Joy of Light
I wait for words to descend, soft, peaceful. They brush my mind with the soft touch of a grey jay’s wings. When they refuse to come, I know that silence is golden. Sunshine spreads its early morning light, upwards, under the blinds, into my room and my eyelashes radiate its rainbow.
Light from the rose window in Chartres once spread its spectrum over my hands, and I rejoiced in the glory of its speckled glow. I spread my fingers before my face and marveled at the suit of lights clothing my body. In such splendour mortal things like words cease to flow.
Words are inadequate. They cannot express what I feel when I breathe in color and light and my heart expands into an everlasting rose, as red as dawn, as bright as a blushing sunrise over Minister’s Island. Flowers burst into bloom. A sense of immanent beauty fills me as light, and warmth, and joy disperse night’s gloom.
Finley has decided, quite rightly, that what she wants to paint, draw, or colour, is much more important than any of the page prompts in the drawing book I got her. That said, this could easily be a comic book cover – or the cover photo of my next book.
“I want to see the world again through the eyes of a little child” – Picasso. The gift of so doing is precious.
The hollyhocks are back. A little bit late, but just starting to reveal themselves in all their glory. It’s been a strange spring, with frost warnings (and two actual frosts) in June, heavy rain, T-Storms, a tornado watch, extra hot days and, thankfully cold nights with the temperatures at +4C, even this month, July.
The yucca plant is flowering again, with three flourishing stems this time. It only started to flower late last week, but it, too, is full of promise. Somehow, while there are flowers, there is still some hope, some beauty, and some time and space for rejoicing.
Ah, daffodils, my favourite flowers.
Daffodils
Winter’s chill lingers well into spring. I buy daffodils to encourage the sun to return and shine in the kitchen. Tight-clenched fists their buds, they sit on the table and I wait for them to open.
For ten long days the daffodils endured, bringing to vase and breakfast- table stored up sunshine and the silky softness of their golden gift.
Their scent grew stronger as they gathered strength from the sugar we placed in their water, but now they have withered and their day is done.
Dry and shriveled they stand paper- thin and brown, crisp to the touch. They hang their heads as their time runs out and death weighs them down.
Vis brevis, ars longa – life is short but art endures. Maybe my daffodils will last longer than the yucca and the hollyhocks. They will certainly outlive this year’s bloom. Time and tide wait for no man, and flowers too are subject to the waxing and the waning of the moon. That’s life, I guess. Long may it last.
On the seventh day he would have rested, but there’s no rest for the restless artists who create in thought, word, and deed.
They can rest from the deed and take a day off work, but thought and word go on.
And even if their day is silent, with no one to talk to, no words at all, the everlasting bunnies of thought dance on and on, beating their drums, planning, sketching, designing, outlining, shuffling the cards, mixing colors and words in endless games of creativity.
rogermoorepoet 