Light
This fragile light
filtering through
the early-morning mind
filled as it still is
with night’s dark
shadowy dreams
their dance demonic
or perchance angelic
as light rises and falls
in time to the chest’s
frail tidal change
the ins and outs
of life-giving breath
Bright motes these birds
at my morning window
feathered friends
who visit daily
known by their song
their plumage
their ups and downs
they dazzle and sparkle
cracking the day open
with their joyous songs
Daybreak
… early morning sunshine
creepy-crawly spider leg rays
climbing over window and wall
my bed-nest alive to light
not night’s star twinkle
but the sun’s egg breaking
its golden yolk
gilding sheet and pillow
billowing day dreams
through my still sleepy head …
… the word feast festering
gathering its inner glimpses
interior life of wind and wave
the elements laid out before me
my banquet of festivities
white the table cloth
golden the woodwork’s glow
mind and matter polished
and the sun show shimmering
its morning glory …
Comment: It seems like only yesterday, though three and a half years have slipped swiftly by. Each summer I am envious of those chosen to represent their artistic disciplines at KIRA. The joys of waking in the Red Room and of writing at the desk there will stay with me for ever. It was pleasure and a privilege. And still I live in hopes to see sunrise from the Red Room once more. This poem incidentally is from my poetry collection entitled One Small Corner. It was written at KIRA (Kingsbrae Gardens) in the month of June, 2017. One Small Corner is available on KDP and Amazon. Here is a link to the KIRA Video.
Dawn
at
KIRA
1
A fiery wedge, fierce beneath
black-capped clouds, alive
the firmament with light,
breaking its waves over woods,
waters, tranquil the bay, grey,
yellow-streaked, then blue,
the new day dawning,
driving night away,
false shadows fleeing.
2
To rock this new born babe,
to swaddle it in a cloak of cloud,
disguised for a moment its promise,
nature nurturing heart and mind,
filling the flesh with memory’s
instantaneous flash breaking its light
into the dark where no light shone,
fearful, the dream world,
gone now, dwindling, as day light
shafts its arrowed flight.
3
How thoughtful My Lady
who placed me here,
at this desk,
at this window,
at this moment of time.
Glorious, this day-break:
words no justice can do
to peace and light,
this early morning,
filtering sunlight
through the waking mind,
relighting the fires
within the heart,
and glory
a word’s throw away
outside this window.
I just rediscovered this. I do hope you enjoy it. Turn up your volume. Masha: thank you so much. And Happy Birthday!!!
Thanks Giving
Driving from St. Andrews to Island View,
giving thanks for fall foliage as I pass
fields and forests filled with autumn blushes
blueberry patches brushed with cyan,
violet, sprinkled with primary red.
Trees crowd close, encroach, add yellow
and orange, fresh tonal values at each turn.
Sunlight strokes white touches of pointillistic
beauty through showers of golden leaves.
Ochre and brown burn shades where pinprick
black ghosts shadow grays through a gilded tree.
Cubist, this fire-bright, iron-sheeted shed.
Surrealist that rusted tractor, abandoned.
The road’s black thread ties together vivid
impressions of leaves as they tumble and fall.
Carpe Diem
Seize the day. Squeeze this moment tight.
Nothing before means anything. Everything
afterwards is merely hope and dream.
A tiny child, you chased wind-blown leaves
trying to catch them before they hit the ground
Elf parachutes you called them and trod with care
so as not to crush the fallen elves as they lay leaf-bound.
I stand here now, a scarecrow scarred with age,
arms held out, palms up, in the hope that a leaf will descend,
a fallen sparrow, and rest in my hand.
When one perches on my shoulder and another
graces my gray hair, my old heart pumps with joy.
Comment: Autumn in the Garden was framed by Geoff Slater who gifted it to me this summer. Thank you Geoff. A double picture, it shows the flowers and the trees with that first touch of drifting snow. NB it snowed here in Island View early September this year while we still had flowers and leaves. The poem, Carpe Diem, is from a series of quasi-sonnets. Quasi, because they rarely have 14 lines! Oh Petrarch: shake in your shoes.
No Exit
a line painting
by Geoff for Andrea Slater
Where is the entry point, where the exit?
This labyrinth of lines, straight, not circular,
baffle the eye, confuse with a negative space
that lightens colors and begs more darkness.
Mystery surrounds the sitter’s form: the board walk,
no Dutch kitchen this, the chair on which she sits,
the locket she wears, the landscape, seascape
against which she is framed. White noise, perhaps,
but noise that turns to a single voice, a single line,
that of the paint-brush tip-toeing, delicate its thread
through interior, exterior meaning, just beyond
the viewer’s grasp. Yet walking past, each person stops,
stands still, as the painting draws them in, ties them up,
binds them with an ineffable thread, stronger than words,
mightier than the eye that traces its way along paths
that deceive, disturb, throw us from the high-wire created
by an artist who turns circular colors into linear space.
Comment: No Exit forms a part of my manuscript collection The Nature of Art and the Art of Nature that placed second in the WFNB’s Alfred G. Bailey Award (2020). This collection will soon be made available online at Amazon / KDP.
Geoff Slater
the inventor of line-painting, gifted me this painting,
one of my hollyhocks about two years ago.
This is indeed a gift that keeps on giving.
Eyeless in Kingsbrae Garden
A feather upon the cheek,
this fern held fragile, hesitant
between fine fingers.
Touch and smell:
two senses engaged.
A paint brush sounds,
brush-brushing lightly
on expectant skin.
Faint the taste tested
suggestive on tongue tip.
No sight, just insight.
I have a sense of senses lacking.
My words reach out like fingers,
but they can neither retain
nor explain the meaning of it all.
Eyeless in Kingsbrae,
They push me, blindfolded,
around the garden.
Gravel crunches beneath
the wheelchair wheels,
sharpens my inability to be sure
of shadows and shapes
that are no longer there.
The ones who push me talk
and tell but cannot show.
How could they hold a rainbow
before my sightless eyes
or explain those lights that
crisp and crackle in the night sky?
There’s warmth in a color,
and heat’s visible to the touch.
Shocking pink has a different
feel beneath blind fingers,
and it has no name
that you and I, sighted,
would ever know.
Oh, Song of Songs, and the singer
deaf to his own sublimity.
Oh dealer of false cards,
fingerless pianist,
and dancer shuffling
on amputated stumps.
Comment: The poem Eyeless in Kingsbrae Garden is contained in my book One Small Corner: A Kingsbrae Chronicle (2017), available online at Amazon / KDP.
Re-[b]-earth
“Get out and about,” she told me.
Take off your socks and shoes.
Walk barefoot on the earth and grass:
twin pleasures, you can choose.”
I took two canes, one in each hand,
and left the house to walk the land.
In the garden I took off my shoes
to walk barefoot on the lawn;
when grass sprang up between my toes
I was instantly reborn.
I stood in the shade of the crab apple tree
and let leaf and flower spill over me.
Sunlight took away my frown
and freckled a smile on my face.
I was blessed again with hope and light;
earth and grass filled me with grace
I stooped to reach my shoes
and carried them home in my hand,
maintaining as long as I could
my contact with this magic land.
When white blossoms filtered down
they gifted me a flowery crown.
Water
Here, in Island View, my lawn’s parched grass
longs for water, long-promised but never drawing near.
Do my flowers remember when the earth slept without form
and darkness lay upon the face of the deep?
The waters under heaven gathered into one place.
When they separated, the firmament appeared.
Light sprang apart from darkness
and with the beginning of light came the word,
more words, and then the world …
… my own world of water in which my mother
carried me until her waters broke
and the life sustaining substance drained away
throwing me from dark to light.
In Oaxaca, water was born free, yet everywhere
lies imprisoned in bottles, in jars, in frozen cubes,
its captive essence staring out with grief-filled eyes.
A young boy on a tricycle pedals the streets
with a dozen prison cells, each with forty captives:
forty fresh clean litres of drinkable water. He holds
out his hand for money and invites the villagers
to pay a ransom, to set these prisoners free.
Real water yearns to be released, to be spontaneous,
to trickle out of the corner of your mouth,
to drip from your chin, and fall to the ground.
It is a mirage of palm trees upon burning sand.
It is the hot sun dragging its blood red tongue across the sky
and panting for water like a great big thirsty dog.
rogermoorepoet 