A Poem a Day (92): Jacob

Jacob

He toes the line,

Walking it backwards,

A heady insouciance

Long taken for granted.

These days stretch countless,

Wide open for the taking,

Long drawn-out summers

Sleeping in an expanse of corn.

He eyes the swallow’s echo,

Full knowing its endless search

For the next resting place,

Scouting the dipping breeze.

A grey driftwood sign points

Northward, but he cranes

His head to the whispering south,

Forever pulled back.

Copyright January 21, 2019

A Poem a Day (91): 5 haiku

5 haiku

We walk in times of slumber;

Zombie politics

Eating from the inside out.

A paper moon, served as a

Curling melon slice,

Drips slivers of silver rain.

Lashing the shoreline, purple

Translucence drags wet

Sands back between fingertips.

Carved out of clear blue,

Curving, this rounded arch meets,

Reflecting itself.

It lifts, mocking you,

One line raised as its brother

Seeks only to fall.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, January 17, 2019

A Poem a Day (90): The stuff of dreams

I did a Faber poetry course at the start of last year and it was great. I recommend it. This is one of the poems I wrote in class. We'd been talking about fantastical poetry, I think, and I wrote something silly. 

The stuff of dreams

We dream in colours, dream sublime,

In the waking hours we’ll tell of the time

Of falling feet off a trespass of bridges –

The mind caves in upon the creep of ages.

In the ebb and flow, the caress of sea,

We sit beneath the roar, this cacophony,

Watching seahorses limbo under green seaweed

And a lobster tango with a centipede.

We draw lines between the earth and sky,

The real, the unreal and the misted goodbye,

Where skeletons dance within a shimmer of stars

Grasping skulls of blood in a moonlight farce.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, 2018

A Poem a Day (89): Self

Here’s a poem I wrote for JD Mader's 2minutesgo website. It’s a great place to go and write whatever is in your head, and read what others are writing in the group, and give/get feedback. It happens every weekend. Cheers.

Self

This part of the self is the one that breathes too easy,

Green as the grass inviting the reminiscence of rain,

Softening the dirt enough for the sparrow to find its worm.

And so it begins, this ring, this O, forever circling us.

Waking birds will jest and dive, and mate and sing,

While the things we count will never be numbers.

The arch is but a monument to our fond travails

And only the lark will rise early enough to sound it.

But I digress, and along this path walk with me.

These days are long, collected in puddles, mud-splattered

Pages blowing across an ever-misted lake drawn,

Offering you an emptied canvas, a fresh beginning.

But know the distancing will turn around only too soon,

For the tides grow impatient and darkness has its eyes.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, January 12, 2019