Winter Lovers

Black stick men ghost between sleeping trees,
catching threads of breath to net birds,
plucking at them with sharp quick fingers,
resting dead limbs on coppiced stumps,
They are waiting for a cold moon.

With vicious smiles and eyes that shatter
stone still water, they stalk the landscape,
stroking rimey shapes across fallen leaves,
tracing crisp patterns that stop the heart,
with fragile beauty, brittle as sunlight.

Dancing in the north wind they call
to their snow maiden lovers with
songs made of cracks and whistles and
lost echoes that haunt dreams filled with
the settling of silent white wings.

I know many people who write or read poetry don’t feel the need to try and grapple with such things. Ultimatly, I think this is misguided. Our language works in a particular way, its stresses falling subtly so that in everyday speach we hardly notice them. The various forms in poetry force the writer to think about how language works, where stress, rhythmn and rhyme fall and to use this to their advantage. The strictures of sonnets or rondels and other forms concentrate the mind. Even attempting to follow a metre as simple as iambic pentametre can mean finding words and phrases that work beautifully that you otherwise would never have imagined. The rules (or guidelines) of poetry are there for a reason. Understanding them improves your appreciation of others work as well as imporving your own whether you choose to follow them or not.

As you can see from my posts to date, I am still struggling with my own writing and still learning just what can be acomplished. To that end here are as promised a couple of haiku. A form that is perhaps not at its best in english, but is familiar to many with its 5-7-5 syllable count.

The Prize

It was whilst moving that I rediscovered the poem below. It must be almost 10 years old now, and perhaps that shows. My writing style having moved on, there are things about it that I desperatly want to change, I want to fiddle with it and make it better or at least different. My question is, should I? Its an old poem, one that I thought I’d finished. I even read it at an eisteadfodd competition when it was complete. Do you ever go back and re-work old poems? Even ones that have found their way into the public sphere? Can you ever stop wanting to tweek your work when it is “finished”?

Anyway, here is the poem…

Fighting the Fear of Spiders

Mother Night

Springtime Wooing

The owls are calling in the rain tonight,
Air hessitantly blown over feathered bottletops,
To assert a claim to airspace,
To serenade their lovers with echoes,
Hung amongst the dripping trees.
The moon is cut in half,
The hare with no back legs,
Settles early beneath the blackthorn hedge.

Jack and the Beanstalk

Jack and the beanstalk ends happily.
Jack gets the treasure.
The giant is dead.
The beanstalk has fallen.
The End?
It scattered ripe beans as it fell.
And greed changes a man.
Murder gets easier each time,
with gold to protect.
A castle in the sky would be safer
than an old farm.
And why waste the bodies?
Long-pig tastes good apparently.
Mother can make a stew out of anything.
including trespassers.

Into the Quiet

Leaves cover the litter lying beside

the road, damped down by early morning mist.

Networks of white fibre fruit through the layered

strata, picked over by unseen insects.

The bare black bones of sleeping trees

sway and clatter in the breeze of passing traffic.

Lines of commuters intent on crawling

to work, blinkered by frost tinted moisture,

miss the mellow light diffused by droplets,

miss the moment a golden leaf lets go.

I sit in the slug trail of slowed cars

wishing to be out, leaving foot shaped holes

in bejeweled grass, wishing to step out of

swipe-in clock-out time and into the quiet.

Sunday Service

Sundays always used to smell of gravy.
The lunchtime roast tucked into the oven
ready for when we returned from church.

My brother and I were tucked, in our turn
into pressed trousers and woollen tank tops.
And itching at our scratching shirts, we were

taken to an extra morning of school
where morals and the love of God were taught
by fierce eyebrows and frightening matrons.

The brick building smelt of sand and dust and
woodpolish, brought to life by shuffling feet.
Greetings and gossip were exchanged before

entering a hall decorated with
a utilitarian pine wood cross
floating infront of a velvet curtian.

Hymn books lined the discomfort
of cold wooden pews that deadened the mind.
The organ wheezed octaganarian notes

to the monotone drone of ernest singing
from the conservative congregation.
We played with toy cars on the dusty floor

shushed and held still for prayers, we popped out
curious eyes around tight pressed palms
to see the quiet habit of devotion.

The inclusive contradictions of scripture
were explained in readings and tired sermons
that everyone would thank the preacher for

with a limp handshake and a weak smile.
We filed out and home to a lunchtime roast
and afternoons that stretched on forever and ended
too soon.

Until The Weather Breaks

The sun feels desert hot in humid air
that presses in and holds its breath. A stillness
condenses clouds just felt by pricking hairs
and black potential rolls across the hills.
Lightening heightens the senses. A flash.
A crack. The roots of the Thunder tree shake.
Wind driven wet chords, barbed with droplets, lash
out at landscapes, until the weather breaks.
Green shouts with joy, as grumbling clouds retreat,
and mourns the damp with the returning heat.