flood moon; toad; morning commute, still

The Tuesday dVerse prompt this week was “flipping meanings“:

Flood moon

The round orb,
washed white by rain,
floats high in the stream.
It is a record
of what has been.
It asks a question
about what was lost.

Original:
Bushfire Moon (April 2020)

A thin crescent,
bloodied by smoke,
hangs low above the ridge.
This is not a portent
of things to come.
It is a statement,
of what is here.

Elementals III: toad

Without a murmur
the water closes behind
the mud-black blob, rising
climbing
glabrous body flopping.
A mugshot of the murk.

Original:
Elementals I: cockatoo (June 2020)

With a shriek
the sky splinters,
a dawn-white shard falls,
swoops
sulphur crest rising
like a glimpse of sun

morning commute, still

Oil slicked concrete
subtly rainbowed
has taken the place
of the fresh green
fields and hills,
spread wide, reaching up
to a clean blue sky.

Original:
Morning commute (July 2020)

Frost coated fields
in glittering white
give way
to the dull grey
of the city
huddled beneath
its brown winter cloak

 

There was a wonderful video of “the opposites game” with the dVaerse prompt – an animation of a narrative poem about a class of children turning a line from Emily Dickinson into its opposite word by word.  Playing with this, I found that sometimes the meaning is reversed, sometimes it remains the same, because flipping “is X” to “is not Y” doesn’t change the meaning where Y is the opposite of X, and often it just doesn’t make sense if you’re too literal.  You can see examples of reversal of meaning and meaning retained in my attempts above.