I am not ready for September

For the dVerse prompt “August transitions‘:

I am not ready for September,
for another Spring.

I would be satisfied to stay curled into myself,
fat and white as a cockchafer
burrowed into the soil
and sleeping snug in the earth,
inhaling only the exhalations of decay,
of the slow composting of last season’s growth.

Surely it is too soon for Spring,
for blossom scent and the lengthening of days
and the bursting forth of new life?
I am not ready.

But somehow August is half done.
The wattles are shouting
their golden threats of spring
and even the photocopier
meeps for more paper like a baby bird.

I am not ready to leave the snug of winter.
I am not ready for another Spring.

remember when the drought broke?

For the dVerse Monday quadrille prompt “pouring out our poems“. A quadrille is exactly 44 words, and for this prompt had to contain the word water.  

 

Remember when the drought broke?
How we followed the gully
down from the house to the waterfall place
overflowing with the laughter, relief –
the dry years’ strain and restraint
discarded with our clothes
in the recklessness of water,
the profligacy of the flood?

 

February 2022, between the bushfires and COVID. 

Imayo: stones

Down by the edge of the stream, my son looks for stones
to put in our pockets and, when forgotten, to
be found again and tumbled – rolled in our hands like
the water rolls them here, in this mountain stream.
I point to one that I like, matt grey and rounded
as a miniature boulder, he brings it to me
where I wait on the pathway, then clambers back down
to choose a stone for himself, and send it skipping.

For the dVerse prompt “MTB Rocking the Imayo“, which Laura explain as:

“–The Imayo* – and this is its structure:

• 4 lines (8 lines permissible)
• 12 syllables per line divided as7/5
• make a pause space between the 7 and 5 syllables
• use comma, caesura or kireji (cutting word) as the pause
• no rhymes
• no meter
• no end of line pauses – the whole should flow together as though one long sentence”

The prompt also required the poem to be about a stone or rock, and a literal one – no metaphors! 

frost ferns, June 20th

Some mornings, when it has been cold enough but not terribly so, and maybe there was rain that left the windscreen wet, the ice is just an opaque sheet. When the sun hits it, it is glowing and opalescent from inside the car, but mostly just a nuisance to be scraped or melted off as quickly as possible.
But when the conditions are just right, truly bitterly cold so the ice grows quickly, it takes a dendritic form: frost ferns. Molecules of water from the atmosphere link up, positive attracted to negative, quickly quickly now, no time to settle into a tidy close-packed stack.
This simple little molecule, just three atoms, but all these local minima in its energy landscape – in each of which is a different crystal form, like surprises in the pockets of an advent calendar. And inside the car this morning is like being inside a Christmas decoration. And oh, the glitter when the sun hits it as we start up the driveway, navigating by memory until the sun and the heater melted them away.

atom by atom
each finding its place
frost ferns grow

Sutton bonfire night 2023, snapshots

An apricot-satin ribbon of sky
inscribed with skeletal trees
slips below the horizon
as white lines catch the headlights,
flick flick flick
tachycardia fast.

3 things / what colour is hope?

For the dVerse prompt “what colour is hope“, to write a poem about 3 things that make you happy:

 

Hope is blue –
the blue of sky
mirrored in every puddle,
and in every full dam
when the drought has broken.

Hope is russet brown –
the brown-paper skin
on a tulip bulb
ready to be nestled
into rich black soil.

Hope is yellow –
the yellow of the leaping flames
of this sympathetic magic
with which we call back the sun
on this shortest day of the year.

 

 

mirror, mirror

I tell the woman in the mirror:
“You’re not who I set out to be.”
She looks at me, somewhat askance
and then she whispers back at me
“Nor are you”
then goes on to say
“but if we stick together we’ll be okay.”

 

Written for the dVerse quadrille “mirror, mirror on the wall” prompt. 

small hours

I dread these “small” hours
these dark hours
these interminable hours,
stretching unbearably
while I watch for the line
between windowsill and blind to lighten

and I am envious
envious to the point of madness
of all these around me
wrapped in their cosy blanket of sleep

it will not come to me
it creeps near,
comes tapping on my scalp like rain
but this impermeable skull keeps me in
and keeps sleep out

hour after hour
all these small hours

I am starving at the feast-

they take their little slice of death
to see them fresh for another day
and I look on at their placid faces,
hear their slow, satisfied breaths
and envy them until I hate them

until I no longer wish to join them
but just for there to be no more days

and no more “small” hours

mezza luna

For the dVerse Monday haibun prompt, to write about the half-moon or “Mezza Luna”:

 

I hardly noticed the change. Just a few days ago there was a thin finger-nail clipping of a moon, hanging above the horizon at sunset, gleaming white against a purple velvet sky. Now on my evening walk she is overhead, a neat half-circle, the terminator drawn with a sharp pencil. And in another week I will see her rise, plump and full, climbing above the ridge to the east as the sun drops below the ridge to the west.
They run in circles, chasing each other above this still Earth. But you can see that she wants to be caught, because she runs a little slower than the sun to let him catch up. But, oh… every time, every time… he runs past her.

Mezza Luna points,
her sunlit face an arrow
aiming at her love

least said…

Curiosity is an irritation,
an itch in the back of the mind.
Oh, the temptation to scratch it…
to break the heavy silence
between light and flippant remarks,
to type but not delete this time.
But…
Don’t ask questions
you don’t want the answer to.
Better to let the irritation fade to a tickle,
than scratch it and leave an open wound.