Clouds pregnant with hope
Give virgin birth to soft snow.
Hard land quiet now.
____________
Snow falls quietly.
Trees and land become silent.
A bird sings its love.
____________
The dead lie still in dark cool earth.
Roots of trees probing their bones,
Their leaves above graced by virgin white
To echo the pleas of those that lie under
To the grey and glowering sky.
____________
I hear the dead whisper in the trees
As snowflakes settle on quivering leaves.
Dead buried beneath
Long probing roots in soft flesh earth,
Where the dead of man and plant
Merge in compound harmony
Watered by the juice of clouds,
And rise through woody sap
To raise their voices in sibilant succour
And praise the God of life.
____________
Such white is this
That I don't deserve.
My soiled life does dirty this snow
Wherever I put my feet.
Wonderful that I
Should be allowed to know
Such purity.
____________
Snow gives a soft veneer
To the crunchy hard beneath.
Like a politician's slippery white smile,
It catches the unawares
And turns to something grey and wet
That just make your trouser bottoms soggy.
___________
That's all folks!
D
Liked all of these. You captured the silence well. I wonder if subconsciously the penultimate one inspired my story; similar theme anyway. Will look forward to reading more. BG
ReplyDeleteI really like your poetry, lovely, thanks for sharing. I'm thinking we should collectively purchase a mic and do open mic's eventually (said that right from the beginning), R
ReplyDeleteWell thank you both. You may be the first people other than me to read any! There is more at www.thetreesarewatching.wordpress.com . But I do warn you that it can be a bit obscure. I like it but I don't expect anyone else to!
ReplyDeleteNot sure about the open mike thing though. Bit too much like Karaoke....
This is all new to me & I'm reading, digesting & learning. :-) Chris.
ReplyDeleteWell, here's me saying how I rarely read poetry, and then I read, and enjoy, two postings of them. You really do know how to use the English language David. I have noted that in your prose, and now in your poetry. Always very nice to read.
ReplyDeleteGraham
By the way, I think this new approach to the blog is really working. I must say that I have enjoyed the previous two that I have taken part in since joining, and have found that the imposed time constraint and having to follow on from someone else's 'chapter' to be really good for pressing me to exercise the writing 'muscle' even more than usual. But this approach does seem to have engendered more participation, and I think it is great that people have been able to chose what style/genre to write in. Although not my genre of choice, it is good to see some poetry, and I liked having the opportunity to write and submit a piece of script - and we still have plenty of fiction prose postings. So everyone is a winner.
Good decision.
Thank you Graham. No one has read anything creative that I've written since I was a teenager taking O level English. So feedback of all types is very welcome.
ReplyDeleteSome lovely images here David, I really enjoyed these and I haven't read poetry for years. Well done and thank you for being brave enough to move away from narrative, it's inspiring, just as this group should be. Sally
ReplyDelete