A Poem a Day (691): Eco blue

 
Prompt: write a poem of at least 10 lines in which each line begins with the same word. This technique of beginning multiple lines with the same word or phrase is called anaphora. www.napowrimo.net

Eco blue

We are as the turn of glass-blown water,
we are motion in the wear of light.
We slide as we sink as we pull to bear,
we reshape, translucent, hesitant to be.
We cup our hands to hold an entire ocean.
 
We are as the seas drift to ebb and part,
we hold firm as the pull becomes our angst.
We cut a line across our open palms, touch,
we feel the cord, this invisible bond between.
We are the breath we share in waves.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, September 22, 2024

A Poem a Day (690): The maybe

 
The word is as it was, as it always did appear,
as it should, as a filler, as a kind of maybe,
and so we choose how we say it, think it, spend it,
while it screws up its expression at the light, redraws
how it thinks we will read it, imagine it into being.
 
This is the question in the answer, the foreboding,
the way we guess without surety, without a window.
 
We stand still in the deluge that cannot guide us,
create a compass in the imprints of our own feet,
follow where they carry us as if they made a bargain,
because we cannot always remember the way,
or we cannot always find a way to remember it.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, September 5, 2024

A Poem a Day (689): Alight

  
They stand in line,
ushered in by the west wind,
 
cards majestic without pose,
neither Jack nor Queen nor King,
 
pegged to split this nestled earth
and yet they anchor us still.
 
They harbour ghosts with no direction,
pursue history and press pause.
 
Grey wolves brush their limbs, listen
to their whispers, marking ground,

but lightning cannot hide its vengeance,
and struck these matchsticks light.
 
Glowing leaves in flight chase scarlet.
From a dip in the hills comes a streak
 
of sirens, the battle cry of the many
come to save nature’s living awe.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, September 3, 2024

A Poem a Day (688): Worn slippers

 
Recoil in sheets and pillows,
blankets of driven snow,
a smothering of words.
 
The gap widens to a chasm
no bridge can traverse,
just a cookie-filled dip.
 
An empty juncture, cooler
with the passage of time,
it becomes impassable.
 
One turns off the light at night,
one sits up and reads a fantasy.
And never the two shall meet.
 
The only warmth in between
is the golden dog. And sometimes
even he finds it too cold.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, September 2, 2024

A Poem a Day (687): Ours

 
I open my hands to take yours.
You open your hands to take mine.
This lack of space devours.
No time outside of travel,
magic without a single left word.
We could drown like this.
Or we can rise.
The moment is futureless,
It does not even feature beyond this room.
It only is.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, September 2, 2024

A Poem a Day (686): An urn

 
Set sail upon a silenced space
of many splintered seas, cast-off
stamped cases, spent places, memories,
all shaken inside snow plastic effigies.
 
Morning comes, sees and fades out.
Darkness tends to hide itself away
if it is too tired to search the stars.
Containers can only hold so much.
 
Into this closeted urn a little each day,
a thought here, story there, a feeling,
regrets, crayon faces from childhood.
There is no deluge, only a plodding ebb.
 
A shadow could just be a curtain dusting,
some days haunt more than others.
So the urn may need to crack or splinter
into a million pieces to become whole.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, September 2, 2024

A Poem a Day (685): Circling

 
 
Always, it was to drift, circling,
an eagle in flight, place to place
amid spaces, finding form in motion,
being just to be and breathe
simplicity, outside the spin
of a world in chaos.
 
Sneak inside to the quiet,
tip up the shade and hide.
The blue mountain sits rigid,
the amber sky continues to stare down
and the dusky sea is ever in roar.
Anchors in, and we are still.
 
The signpost points myriad ways,
with and without direction,
here, there, and the wherewithal.
Seeking the compass, due north,
we stand. Breathe in the sea air,
taste the salt. And wait.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, August 30, 2024

A Poem a Day (684): The dance

 
 
We blow out the dance,
circling as bees do, nectar strewn
between.
 
We tip-toe around what is, what was,
what may be. But nothing
is set in stone.
 
We tread a board invisible,
try to see, but we are blind.
We get on anyway.
 
Sometimes this fragile ground
gives way when we wanna sway,
and we just are.
 
There is only look, a glance,
a something unsaid, a depart from
composure, the raw,
 
the who we are beneath,
outside the goldfish bowl,
skin and bones and all we are.
 
You can throw gold in the fountain,
but it won’t return, and who we were
meant to be is memory.
 
We take a barefoot walk,
drift in the light of the splayed moon,
and cast a coin at maybe.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, August 30, 2024

A Poem a Day (683): Stone

Stone. It’s only stone.
A rock. Grit. Edgy as hell.
It can’t roll unless you push it.
It won’t stick unless you make it.
 
Here it lies beneath the beat rain
etching words, pictures drawn,
sunken stick forms, the unrequited.
 
We measure ourselves against things
when we don’t ever need to.
 
Shadows are, and shadows become,
as light moves and breathes and eels,
yet the stone will always be.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, August 30, 2024

A Poem a Day (682): Stowaway

 
Stowaway
 
He did it for her sacred heart,
kept it locked in a still warm box,
sealed with a charm, not a kiss,
considered it his.
 
Rhythms beat into song,
rise on the tides, sweep out to sea,
whisper incantations on severed waves,
things even the gulls cannot hear.
 
An adventurer clipped back to land,
she holds out her hands for the doves,
the silken plumes of butterflies,
tugs on her rusted anchor.
 
We lose ourselves a little in the stars.
 
One day he will prise open the box,
free her spirit to seek out the dawn,
when he can. When he knows
he won’t feel lost in the silence.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, August 30, 2024