A Poem a Day (695): Talons & other poems

 

I wrote some little poems for JD Mader’s weekend writing exercise, 2minutesgo, in the morning on Sunday, while waiting for my dinner to cook. Head to his website every weekend to write about about anything you like. It’s mainly flash fiction.

 

Talons

A puzzle with no end,
the one true road rain-drenched
of meaning, this guide sidelined.

Rest within the pit of pages,
wrestle with the how and the why,
how the wild must be tamed,

except the eagle will always need
to soar & the grey wolf run free,
no matter the myriad ties & blocks.

Talisman 

Inside a talisman, the eye,
an amethyst vision
the sky could not hold
lest it turn the sunrise out,
& bereft of nature’s burn
we shift. An acreage hides us,
shades us from the night,
wakes us with a blackbird’s call
in emerald light, leaves shrugging,
as if we should never doubt
their incurable care.

His muse

If only she had behaved,
he said, as though she were a pet.
He beat the dog,
but the dog was allowed a daily walk,
so she was below him
in order of rank in his house.

He was all about power, control,
undermining & reinventing,
but history is not a wheel
and she neither wood nor stone.
She held out for a hero,
but no one came, only the storm.

From her turret in the pearl clouds,
she could only stare down,
the old world so estranged now,
betwixt the brambles & the moon.

Lullaby

His words were like a lullaby,
soft & low, a murmur of a rhyme.

You were blessed to hear it
for he did not speak so often,
not since the forgetting time,
the drift & shift between the firelight,
a breaking, a split that roared
into a chasm of bleed. Days spin
& glide to a sharp edge sometimes,
the out of tune only feel the grit,
the solitary drip of seconds on repeat,
when time stopped. The cat curls,
ginger fur entwined with scarlet flame,
fire snapping at dry twigs, pointing.

It’s where he sits & ponders things,
the day he could not freeze,
the moment etched inside, the one
he cannot utter, even to himself.
So sometimes he sings a lullaby
to the one woman he could not save.

Scarlet

Chase the morning
where it dances in blue,
skirts the dripping sun
birthing through cloud.

There is scarlet & there is you,
a mist the rain sent to me,
scent of green & in-between,
a pressing need to hold & know.

Nature's echo

We count lines devoid
of numbers, the zero, the no-show,
the inside out of wilding,
bare leaves drawn & coloured in,
the passing of an ancient storm,
& we are shrouded here in moss,
shrunk to our own raw nature,
our curves becoming rock,
tree roots binding us together.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, November 17, 2024