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.
Outreach
It’s so easy to cast the tiniest
pebble into the tranquil pond.
Sit and watch the ripples spreading,
flowing outwards, touching unknown
shores with a smidgen of warmth,
a lapping of love.
Reaching out, from the center
to the periphery, not knowing
where the outreach is going,
but knowing that the effort is
never in vain if it helps someone’s
suffering, reduces their loneliness,
brings light to their lives,
and relieves their pain.
Bread cast upon the waters,
returned in great store,
three, five, seven, ten times
more than what you cast.
Your spider-web lines
thrown inwards and outwards
in a gesture of faith, hope,
and a charity chest of tenderness
to lighten a burden, to remove
the dark from another’s heart.
It’s so easy to select a pebble,
but who will throw that first stone?
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.
Surrounded
Surrounded by beauty,
a magical paradise
trapped for a moment
in a sunlit mirror,
the past laid out before me,
the thought, word, deed
of a painted reality,
of painted realities really,
visions leaving the mind
only to be caught in line,
color, shape, and paint,
and frozen in time,
each one date-stamped,
and placed here, there,
everywhere on wall after wall,
until I am surrounded,
breathless,
within this circular
vista of visions filled
with inherent beauty.
Dydd Dewi Sant Hapus
Daffodils
(for my mother)
Light in dark
bright yellow stridence
shrill golden dog’s bark
to warn off death’s wolves
that freeze her blood
she dreaded night’s unease
the devil’s wintry anti-spring
life’s darkest sparks
but loved the daffodils’
sunny March cadence
of brief piercing dance
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.
A Moment
“A moment in your life,” she said,
“a moment that changed you forever.”
A bad boy,
banned from representing the school,
condemned to acting as a servant
to the chosen few,
those who were good enough to go.
They gathered early in the refectory.
I served them tea.
But first I salted the tea pot with Epsom Salts,
or something similar.
The tea pot frothed and foamed , then settled.
Later, the house master called me.
“Can you dance? he asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Show me,” he said. He handed me a chair
and put a record on his gramophone.
I danced, six legs, to his satisfaction.
“Put on your Sunday suit,” he said.
“Be on your best behavior.
It appears we have suffered a bout
of gastro-enteritis.”
That’s where I met her.
Age seventeen. At a school dance.
The one. My one. The only one.
Sixty years later, we’re still together.
Writing this, I see us as we were back then.
My chest goes tight.
My eyes overflow with tears.
Click on this link for Rogers reading.
A Moment.
One Goldfish
A great big thank you to Allan Hudson, editor of the South Branch Scribbler Blog. He e-mailed me on my birthday, last Sunday, and asked me if I had a story that he could use on his new blog page Short Stories from Around the World. These will be published every other Wednesday, starting today. I am very honoured and proud to be the author of the first story, One Goldfish, third place in the WFNB non-fiction award (2020), that opens the series. It was revised and reworked in the Advanced Writing Course, run by Brian Henry of Quick Brown Fox fame. I would like to thank Brian and all my fellow participants who helped me rework the story. On Allan’s blog you will find links to other contributions from me. You will also find a series of featured authors, from New Brunswick, the Maritimes, Canada, and all around the world. Allan does a great job for us minor, struggling literary figures, not just for the greats. I encourage you to follow his blog and support him.
Ephemera
My painting (above) is entitled Ephemera. It shows a literary text semi-obliterated by various colors and devices. If we have learned anything from Covid it should be the fragility of life, the insubstantiality of existence, and the enormous powers of the natural world that surrounds us. My friends: take nothing for granted. Carpe Diem – seize the day – and “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may – for time it is a’flyin – and that poor flower blooming today – tomorrow may be dying.” This is Robert Herrick, of course. Here is my own version of the theme from The Nature of Art and the Art of Nature.
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.
Grey clouds fill the sky. A distant sun
lights up the land but doesn’t warm the earth
nor melt the snow. The north wind chills
body and soul, driving dry snow
across our drive to settle in the garden.
The daffodils promise warmth, foretell
the sun, predicting bright days to come.
When they do, red squirrels spark at the feeder.
For ten long days the daffodils endure, bringing
to vase and breakfast-table stored up sunshine
and the silky softness of their golden gift.
Their scent grows stronger as they gather
strength from sugared water. But now
they begin to wither, their day almost done.
Dry and shriveled they stand this morning,
paper-thin, brown, crisp to the touch, hanging
their heads as oncoming death weighs them down.
rogermoorepoet 