fragments I: stones

I
Sun glitters on the ferry’s wake.
Its wash tumbles another cairn,
the clack of the stones
scatters amongst his laughter.

II
“I gave my father a stone,
to hold him here,
to remind him.”
I heard, yet I neglected to do the same.

III
Intricately wound and ornamented shells
shatter among rough glass and smooth stones.
Littoral becomes pocket kipple,
soon-forgotten, scattered and lost.

IV
The sharp edge planes the surface,
raising a glittering curtain, falling
as the stone skips onward.

 

Collected for the dVerse MTB prompt “picking up some pieces” – gathered partly from an old poem, with some new shards to form a fragment poem.

in the moonlight of other nights

For the dVerse “in the light of other days” prompt, a request to share a memory, recent or past.  This is a little of both, and the possum shown in the pictures here, that I took last night, may well have been the baby of an earlier season’s “poss”.

Poss has come visiting again.

Caught in the torchlight
she runs up a post
only to discover her way blocked.

Was there no roof here last time she visited?
Or has she forgotten?

Memory is a fickle friend,
hers and mine.

confession of a physicist

So, I wrote my last post in response to the dVerse prosery prompt, which was to write up to 144 words of prose including  the line “I am bombarded yet I stand”. Then I thought I’d better actually read the poem by Adrienne Rich, “Planetarium”, that the line comes from.  And I wrote this as my proseyness instead: 

XXXXXX

XXXXXXI have a confession:

I don’t like astronomy. I find it really boring.

Go on, gasp in horror. Judge me soulless.

then who?

I question whether I could be kinder. Whether I should be kinder. Whether, once (twice?) rejected, I have the right to simply opt-out now.
I am tempted to say nothing, or to speak only platitudes. That would be so easy, to nod and abide by her mantra of “we’ll see what happens”.
But we’ve seen what has happened. What has happened, on the golden child’s watch. The golden child who only ever tells her what she wants to hear. Until the police and social workers are listening.
Silence might be a kindness in the moment. But his complicity in the fantasy that everything is alright is how we got to here.
So, I make the phone calls, I make the decisions, and I take her complaints and accusations. I am bombarded. Yet I stand. Because, if I am not my mother’s keeper, then who?

Written for the dVerse prosery prompt: no more than 144 words of prose including the line “I am bombarded yet I stand”.

the ghost kangaroo of Gundaroo

Reposting this for Halloween: 

Come gather round the campfire mates,
and we’ll share a tale or two.
And I’ll tell you one that’s true and straight,
of the Gundaroo ghost kangaroo.

make up your damn mind

The dVerse Halloweeny Humans prompt was to write a poem with a Halloween flavour about a human attribute we hate.

Imagine a busy marketplace, and you’re in the line for a coffee, and some bastard up the front doesn’t know what they want…  signing impatiently you glance around, noting the length of the line, and a cowled figure at the back.

 

Just make up your mind!
There are people behind,
who have things to do
not just wait for you.
Sure, kill your own time,
but stop wasting mine!
‘Cos at the end of the line
is the guy with a scythe.

 

I really hate indecisiveness. It’s irritating at best, and at worst selfish when it abdicates responsibility to others, increasing their cognitive load and burdening them by making them do the thinking for you and be the grown-up.      

 

a slurry of ashes

The guardianship application says Mr…
Not Dr…

I could ask for it to be corrected.
But why bother?

He doesn’t remember he held that title.

Alcohol didn’t feed the flame of his intelligence.
It doused it,
leaving nothing but a pale slurry of ashes.

 

A quadrille for the dVerse “ashes to ashes” prompt: 44 words exactly, including the word ash or a variation.

riding the waves

The pain wakes me,
swelling and rolling through me,
and then passing, as if it never was.

But another swell comes.
And another.

transformers

For the dVerse prompt “creepies and crawlies“, a sonnet about slaters:

When the sun is up and the birds about
you can find them, if you know where they creep
into the crevices, all flattened out –
the slate-grey slaters, all huddled in sleep.

a clover for Worms

This is for Worms, and for the dVerse novelinee challenge:

Sometimes among the green, something… stands out,
an imperfection, something that’s not right,
an extra leaf that bends the shape about.
That symmetry – it catches at my sight…
And here it is, four lobes instead of three.
Whatever luck it holds, I give to you,