A Poem a Day (696): The ruby heart

 
The ruby heart
 
The ruby heart, it glows, it breathes,
knows itself yet truly no one else.
It lives within. It sings a song sometimes,
only to itself, a low, languorous rhyme,
keeps home in its ribcage, draws itself in,
its trivial humour a shield.
 
With the years it grows wise,
yet still no wiser than it was. Childlike,
it sometimes beats with wild abandon,
loves with an ardency it had forgot,
how it burned in the decades before,
and yet it was always there, buried deep.
 
Other times it is silent, at rest out to sea,
in the calm before the uncalculated storm.
The ruby heart can only be what it is,
it cannot flit to suit another’s whim
or pretend to be something it is not.
It is only a gem. This little precious thing.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, November 20, 2024

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

 

A Poem a Day (694): Glow

 
Glow
 
We beat high, beat low,
drum the sacred earth with dry feet,
sweep dust into a prism of heat,
whip pure motion into power,
step inside the energy of each,
hearing the rattle of the charmer.
 
Gold shimmers, snakes, feels
its way in streaks & wavering lines,
red silk twists, lifts, spirals out,
this glow an echo of an old record,
and we are free for a moment,
we are one, and we are life.
 
Vickie Johnstone, October 17, 2024

A Poem a Day (693): Drop

Drop
 
It’s a fall of water, musical notes,
first floating, then thick, heavy,
repetitive, too out of tune.
A repeat that will not fade out.
The tap locked. Windows closed.
No escape from interlocking sound.
 
It comes in waves some days.
In others it’s an uncuttable record.
No pause. No erasure. No lightening
of the load. It just is. Unstoppable.
 
You could blink & fall out of space,
the end never in sight, but shrouded,
somewhere deep into dark.
A well no one throws a coin in.
 
You don’t speak for an endless time
if you cannot find your voice.
In the tumult. In the wilderness.
Out there in the nothing it now is.
 
We scurry forth like ants, directionless,
seek solace, a guide, a measure of the thing.
And the world ticks on, full-forward,
while we sit staring at the clock now locked.
 
They say a prism can become a prison
if you choose to stare into it too long.
A walkway can become too narrow,
the memory of a raindrop the weightiest load.
Just a postcard with a benign address,
stamped with a face you never knew.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, October 15, 2024

A Poem a Day (692): Solace

 
Solace
 
Morning is as evening was,
shutters clamped, the blue wrestles in,
motions in the egg-yolk sun full-stamped
with sweeps of white, pink streaks of light.
Left to our solitary reinvented selves
we climb the walls of our cluttered minds,
think upon boredom as a quieting sigh,
make plans only to procrastinate and dream
a while.
 
Evening is as morning was,
starlight flown across a void of dark voices,
countering the elements, seldom reined back,
and we stack our dreams against twilight’s verse.
We will be lost until we are found.
Above, the blackbirds sit lulled into silence
as we wander barefoot through dewy grass,
peek through jaded leaves to see the dawn
blink in.
 
Morning is as morning could be,
and we rise with the lark, open senses,
welcome the day in mindful gratitude,
curious to see in another year’s restart.
Open a book, pick up a pen, visual on paper,
play a note, sing a lullaby, greet the early bird.
We hunt inspiration outside our sheltered selves,
seek conversation and a connection in time,
become alive.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, October 15, 2024

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