From my bedroom window, the pigeon
squats heavy in the blossomed tree,
his purple throat romancing
some long distance lover.
This secret language
sounds to me like
desire
longing
hope

The sun soaked cat sleeps
Drawing the days energy
Long into her bones

cover the early morning light / cover
up to the fontanelle and beyond /
the sharpened light of stars remain
blank // I still see
spots of drizzling light
hit the pink place in the eyes / O drown
me in the thread count / hold me
on the hot springs / for darkness /
the dawn will eat up every…/ my
head / is the only thing broken

Lycaon Makes a Stew

He browns the meat, prime cuts, fillet
No little bones, sinew removed
and adds the onions. No tears to weep.
This is business. Cooking for kings.

He dives garlic, carrots, swede.
The knife moves on, mechanical.
He adds stock, a spring of thyme.
Turns up the heat, slow to the boil

The first bubble makes his heart sink
But soon, the broth-smell fills the kitchen
The steam stains the ceiling.
A hunger growls

How to Harvest the Poetry of Bees:

-First, find the hive. Follow the low drone hummmmm and the pollen.
-Next, look inside. A kaleidoscope of stripes and stimming web-wing. These are the words. Collect them.
-We all have an imagination if we try.
-Find the queen. She is bigger than her mates, thiccer. She will take the first stanza and set the tone. Set her apart in a small glass jar and wait. The madness is a cliché building.
-Anticipate the swarm. Without their governess these bees become hellbent. Find the chaos in their heartbreak, the metaphors for love. The stings, a keepsake of pain.
-Put it all down.
-Finally, fingers in the honey. Separate it from the comb and watch its weight gulp.
Keep it in the cold and watch it crystallise. Keep it in the sun and watch it soften. Keep it for a century. Keep it beside the bedside for whispering haikus.
-Accept, yes, Bees are a recurring theme.
Get over it. Relax.

There is so much more to say about their secrets.

Today’s prompt asked us to perform a ‘glosa’. I took my four lines from the Frank O’Hara poem, ‘On a Mountain’

“the bare trees under and the visible jet planes/the enormous telegraph paths and grassy snow/the pale photographic sky, the tangled air/crackling above heaving marshes into the day’

While I don’t think I quite got the assignment, I certainly wrote something interesting…

One day I will walk outside barefoot
when the tall hours of the morning
are still stacked against the sky,
with my feet in the earth-spit grasses and its frostbite,
away from the house and its children, deep
in the dreamscape of their night-lives. I will walk on to the hilltop;
the bare trees under and the visible jet planes

that take us nowhere. to nothing. I will sing
into the distance. I will dance. my body will throw
shapes against a sunrise no one else will ever see.
I will think, if I should leave this town –
barefoot & bra-less in my raggy-thin nightie
and follow the pavement out, visible only
to the yawning birds, speckled and web-eyed,
the enormous telegraph paths and grassy snow,

who would know? the sun’s a blind witness. the jury of clouds
hung. to dream of escape is to live for it.
what I long for is forgiveness. for nature.
to be reborn, renewed, a torrent of salt-lake or a quaking of geese,
to bloom as intended, a magnification of impeccable colour or
the pale photographic sky, the tangled air

that suspends me. there. I will not be an old lady walking
away from the night and her lifeblood.
I will not be a hand-sack of meat and bone.
no, I will be electric. a current of ions
and explosions. an impulsive circuit
crackling above heaving marshes into the day

afterwinter

I’d hoped for beauty. beauty does not come but through my window the sun cuts

the film dust, the finger smudge, and further still, the trees, no longer a grave of split fingers but a parade, their new leaves bright in gestation. they know the promise of this sun can not be broken.

and now, birdsong, urgent and near

I’m ready. It seems to say. Those sudden snows were mistaken. This is no place for silence. This is a place for celebration.

That first time, he handled me like bruised fruit. Nothing loud, just an intermittent purring. His hands like water. My eyes were closed. My heart went about it’s business in it’s secret chamber. Nothing loud. And when he finished I didn’t know if my skin was scorched, branded with fire damage, or if I had disappeared like vapour, was up with the clouds, ready to roll away.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

 

I have never been
a morning person
barely a person at all
tho I do enjoy
the pattern of twilight shadows
can almost gloat thru golden hour,
the pantomime of sun
cursed in her demise
No I don’t care
where she goes
as long as she doesn’t
bother me with
her flame and flare,
her caterwauling

Still there is nothing
spontaneous about
the way the birds talk
in fact, I’d say they’re
well-orchestrated –
haven’t they been
rehearsing for years?
Yes, they do bring
a softness
to the morning,
they do bring routine,
scissoring
the darkness from
between the branches.
They can even bring joy
to the lonely.
The early risers.
They keep the cat on his toes

But this all means nothing
when you are too tired to sleep
too hungry to eat
this all means nothing
when you have forgotten
how to stand.
We celebrate the day
as though it means birth

tho it is only
in true darkness
that we really ever
love the light