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

A Poem a Day (681): Hollows

 
He guards the hidden hollows,
cobwebbed snags in window frames,
corners asleep in the acreage,
where the hundreds came and went.
 
We sit in the dugout fireplace,
smell the scarlet wave of ember leaves
and disappear into the missing edges,
the past sneaking out of dank walls.
 
Shadows hunt without guile.
We are the mirrors of our histories,
mortality sunk, a-spiral in the smoke
perspiring through covert echoes.
 
They say it will snow, cover every track,
dents and ingress, the expedient,
and we grow old imagining how
to weather this frigid earth.
 
He makes his presence known sometimes,
lays heavy on our silent shoulders
not quite broad enough to take
the weight of his fate.
 
In the winter we raise a crimson toast,
remember, trace the date full back
a hundred years now spent.
A twist in the past, a fork in the road.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, August 30, 2024

A Poem a Day (680): Paper spaces

 
Paper spaces
 
Within this misted riptide, the waste, torn paper,
the gutter gasping over, essence of the amiss,
a picture with no smile, the sound outside of
being, the birth of columns without words.
 
Etched wood signposts erase, directionless,
crystal waves, they rise, stay frozen-peaked,
desert roads stretch, continue to burn and turn,
all the endings forever out of someone’s reach.
 
Where they burrow down, they dig out deep,
rosebud noses breaking ground. Whiskers flicker,
considering the gaps and measuring in between
the spaces without and the spaces within.
 
Without their senses, you backtrack into night,
where one star may lead, the others distract.
We nestle in the trees with the souls of those long past.
Branches will not yield. Roots too long entangled.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, August 13, 2024

A Poem a Day (679): Clouds

 
Clouds
 
You take the clouds sometimes,
revisit ambition in a fog-blown glass,
drift among the old ones tugging your soles,
their roots deep, too far away.
 
There is echo in the moon, the spill of its rays,
motion in the wide ocean that empties out.
 
The book lies closed where you set it down.
Idle. Your stories ask to be read,
yet you leave them in a darkened room.
 
Spirits of ages hunt the huntress, glisten the
hours of light cascades, the wretched waiting,
for you are drawn, imagined, talked upon,
but you are not how you are sketched.
 
Time ticks. Not so eager, not so slow.
This background shifts. Awaken movement.
He is at liberty, and yet he is not.
He lives, and yet he cannot sink inside it.

On the surface, a simmer,
the circular line invisible.
 
The elephant follows the herd, wise, sturdy.
He will follow til the end of his days,
rest with the sick, mourn upon the dead.
 
Here, we test our own mortality,
stripped of youth’s belief that we are stone.
 
Vickie Johnstone, August 11, 2024

A Poem a Day (678): Phantoms

Phantoms

Timeless. Where the horizon shrinks,
where the sky sprinkles silver lace,
once-eager waves reaching into peace.
We are lifted. We are something other.

He gathers his footprints across the sand,
a solitary walk. A wander into brilliance,
the hand of the sun’s rays shining down.

And strangers are met without speech.
Wet costumes cling to vibrant bodies,
perspiration glitters, laughter unites.

The old and wise sit back against the rock,
feel its coldness seep into their skin,
hats askew, towels drawn, toes dug deep.

We think upon the sun. Upon time.
Linger awhile in the reflection of ourselves.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, August 8, 2024 

A Poem a Day (677): Ricochet

 
Ricochet

Life ricochets,
outside of warmth,
footsteps upon an enamel floor,
wrinkles cast in this idle stone
we sit upon and desire upon
a crimson distant moon. Flecks dart
and reflect, this embrace of night,
Nocturne aghast at Light’s disperse.
 
I wander in. I wonder to disappear.
An arc of wave rises, subsides, just is,
and I am, as I always have been,
an echo of a belief, breaths of time,
seeking the limits of what we know.
We can step out or we can step in.
I stand between the here and the other,
taste the salt of the sea, vanish a little.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, August 8, 2024

A Poem a Day (676): Step on out & other hay(na)ku

Written for JD Mader’s writing blog – check in at 2minutesgo and start writing.
 
A hay(na)ku consists of a three-line stanza, where the first line has one word, the second line has two words, and the third line has three words. 
 

 
Step
on out,
slide inside in.

 
Buzz
lightly aloft,
bumble soft dance.

 
Ecstatic
light, revoke
night’s pin-point.

 
Click.
On. Off.
Light’s suggestive spark.

 
One.
A paw.
A toe. Impromptu.

 
Scarlet
rose, pearl
ears of snow.

 
Pelts,
blue scales,
shaken jagged pieces.

 
Split
selves, empty
cusks, dishevelled shells.

 
It
snakes, eels,
eats hexagon hearts.

 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, July 14, 2024

A Poem a Day (675): Endurance

 
Endurance
 
 
Endurance, an eternal battle, stuck fast
within this perimeter, a line drawn.
An axe could strike right through it.
Shackles off, here lies exploration’s tomb,
speckles from a purpled moon,
nimble stars set the black seas alight.
 
We turn, sight the markers, send into flight
a scarlet flare to light this endless verve.
Fireworks in the midst of miles of nothing,
only blue ice in kindest verisimilitude.
Where all the seekers have come to see,
there is now only silence struck.
 
Strewn across the ocean floor in boxes
linger the memories of the escaped crew,
cases etched with their unique histories,
rusted hinges keeping their secrets kept.
We learn nothing from their outside shields,
sanded down in the wide Weddell Sea.
 
Above, jaded creaks whisper of the ages lost,
a symbol of the Heroic Age crushed, and we
final-check our gear, deep dive into the wall,
a Narnia beneath the waves. Emptiness engulfs.
We swim as fish through the ribs of the body,
their pristine timbers yawning under pressure.
 
For a moment, we step back into 1915,
imagine the intrepid men who manned the ship
drifting past as shadowed dreams, where now
suckered anemones, sea lilies and starfish cling
to their stately home, a-shimmer in technicolour,
hearing the beating heart of a better world.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, July 13, 2024

A Poem a Day (674): Ride the line & other poems

Prompt from NaPoWriMo.net: a hay(na)ku consists of a three-line stanza, where the first line has one word, the second line has two words and the third line has three words. 

12 hay(na)ku

Ride
the line,
read in between.
 
 
Dope,
chaotic reload,
unkempt arctic smile.
 
 
Jump,
connecting in,
pure beat sublime.
 
 
Eight,
so figured,
redrawing twisted circles.
 
 
Plucked
clover emeralds,
unbonded, lucked out.
 
 
Life
fulfilling birth,
wavering eternal wanderings.
 
 
Distance.
A call.
Empathic mnemic overload.
 
 
Aces.
High stakes.
Play your hope.
 
 
Wires.
Crossed. Exchanged.
Gathered in recall.
 
 
Shapes.
Shifters. Shadows
creep in switchback.

 
Running,
wind catching,
spirals circling free.
 
 
Lips.
Touch. Part.
Wonder the moment.
 
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, July 7, 2024

A Poem a Day (673): Wander lust

 

Wander lust

 

She cannot find in looking,

dusts down these scarlet echoes unlived,

so out of steam, bereft and sold,

in a cage of ages etched in gold.

 

Plucked from a single straw,

the broomstick flinches close,

beats against the witching post.

 

Open the windows wide,

let the present wander in,

flood the walls in faery fire,

seek the things that will never tire.

 

We ring the leaves & bells tonight,

dare to dance barefoot wild,

this enigmatic moon beguiled.

 

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, July 7, 2024