It starts with a perfect drop of rain falling from a cloud – and the future arrives just as water, rippling the stillness of a pond, releasing mayflies, dragonflies, and herons that flap their wings like broken umbrellas against spring rain. The gorged river glints, powerful and steadfast on its intrepid journey to the coast, […]
Category: Poems Inspired by Artists, Music and Other Writers
Cracked
It was a tragedy, seven years’ misfortune. And yet, the shards were beautiful, sharp edges shimmering, a dark rift spreading as the mirror cracked from side to side. A waterfall of tiny splinters tumbled to the stone flagged floor and underneath the bathroom door, tiny jewels of tears sobbed from her magnificent reflection: bound by […]
Snake in the Grass
It is a grass snake. It is curled in autumn leaves. It is autumn leaves. In it is a curled grass snake. A curled autumn snake? Is it? It is leaves in grass! It is curled in grass. It is a snake autumn leaves. Curled leaves in grass. It is a snake. It is autumn. […]
Nettles
We are not subtle, although we blend, green in the midst of green, our sting, our poison bating our green breath with not a quiver. Hiding in the green, we remain unseen, waiting pungently for a patch of skin a recipient for our histamine; we long to puncture a scarlet tattoo, stinging souvenirs. Our hairy, […]
Poem
Long gone are days of turf and mud, green fields rising in mist and rain; old cords were cut and never tied again, but ours endures, a cord of blood. We have squared the fairy ring of mushrooms, magical and bathed in dew, we’ve come full circle, me and you, my changeling born in autumn […]
Monochrome
Beneath the frost of November moon they murmur musky mist around the bone of tree-like antlers, a message of timeless continuity, melodic but wordless like the music of rain and flowing streams, or stars and comets rejoicing in their beams. Russet and lemon-yellow leaves no longer rustle but drift and rot, muting Earth the singer […]
Beauty Beyond the Grave
The shadow of laudanum no longer stained her skin, in life and death her beauty spilled luminous, and green-blue eyes belied disease that once coiled within. Her glorious red hair had grown beyond eternal sleep, entangled in it, Rossetti’s book of poetry, penetrated by a single worm where damp and mould had seeped. Seven long […]
Flipped
It was a raging sea-magic kind of day, with thunder clouds and wind-whipped waves that made us mermaids forget salty witches. Oblivious to consequence, caught up in the rumpus, we anticipated handsome seamen snatched by squalls from a schooner’s deck, combed out the tangles in our waist-length hair and spread our glistening fish-tails on a […]
A Question of Tears
‘From where does the thundercloud come with its black sacks of tears?’- Neruda Black sacks of tears arrived on my doorstep today; I thought they’d been delivered by the coalman, until I opened them, and some teardrops got away, attaching themselves to leaves and gutters, dripping on my shoulder, soaking my jacket like a sobbing […]
Shades of the Seashore
We walk along the blustery beach, embraced by towering arms of rock laced with white foam cuffs. Falling sheer to shore, sombre cliffs, banded with distorted strata of basalt, rusty iron, brown and buff, are broken by moss-cloaked boulders, moist with silver sea mist and rain, and crowned with gnarled oak, wind-blasted, salt-stunted limbs leaning […]
