Dance of life
down into the moist willing earth,
inviting our roots to take hold
in this dank, dark home.
spirals on trees a ready fingerprint
of identity, grooves of history,
records of green music to be played.
stretching branches in a ready dance,
limbs entwined, a natural face
to the downturned clear-blue sky.
Salute
brown leaf held to his hat,
woollen and blue-edged,
his scarf a tongue spilling
unrolled, coat buttoned up
against the biting weather.
Lion faces on fluffy mittens
dance from his arm holes
on white elastic strings.
He grips the stem tightly,
never wanting to let go.
It covers his whole head
like a secondary cap, a tap
to autumn’s steady blush.
Sentries
night’s
ache drips full scope,
lights
suspended, pure small dots
of living
sensation blinking out
to the
lost, all the wanderers
on their own
searching, unfound.
The trees
stand sentry on the lake,
still and
steady, not breaking lines.
They are
the watchers of the dark,
this pristine
place, displaced art.
The pool
collects light, its rays
trickle
from the sky like silk,
splashing
in a steady tune to water,
sinking and
spreading night’s word.
A poem from a black and white photograph
rib cage laid open,
settles into the sand
as white as the light
baking under the sun.
Breezes create waves
spun over this surfacing.
A split oar spills
overboard stuck fast,
half a starboard missed.
Rotten boards washed blue
will never more set sail
from this final resting place,
beached out of flow.
Woman in water
A woman lies on water
in suspended animation,
bubbles of breath blow,
the sea her bed now.
her white clothes stream,
arms and feet relaxed,
headrest water’s brow.
She treads as though
gravity does not exist,
fingers caress cool flow.
the forgetting here is slow,
life on an even keel
where the trees hum silent.
Image: woman in water by Toni Frissell. On Vintagephotoarchive.
We recollect our
barefoot wand’rings in the park,
dew cool on dawn grass.
A meditation.
We are silence. We are still.
Our bodies at rest.
The old man searches
for something lost, something found.
All the same these days.
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, June 5, 2021
Light
curves, moonlight hears.
A bat flits
in the silence
of dusk.
Unheard. Still.
The sea
flickers out,
collects
silver light and ebbs,
clear fingers
glitter.
The mind here, unspun,
leaves fall on a spirited
path. There are no eyes.
Thin black cat
slinks out,
makes a
space on highest wall,
surveys his
kingdom.
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, June 4, 2021
This one is about mushrooms pushing up through the soil.
Make room
mushrooms
plague soil to rise,
unstifled
and forever promising
never to
sleep during night’s play.
We are as
monks full captured,
quiet and
forlorn in our hideaway,
a bid to
scuttle the earth sideways
and wrestle
the sun for ourselves.
But this is
dusk, daylight scattered
and with it
our deepest yearnings,
for an
existential moon gaze
is what
this twilight will bring us.
