Tag: Tuesday Poetics

Back to School

In the first week of childhood’s September, going back to school was unreal, when I discovered a new sense of smell: I inhaled new uniform, shoes and plimsolls, and the scent of sharpened pencils in satchels. I breathed stale lost property masked with polish from parquet floors of classrooms and the hall; chalk-free blackboards and […]

Unseen to the Naked Eye

In the prelude to a storm, I watch the sky bruise, hear thunder introduce lightning in a breath before it pirouettes across the sky. As the show fades into the distance, ghosts appear in a pale fluttering of moths filling the garden with clouds. Unseen to the naked eye, in the grass or in the […]

Breaking the Silence

the moon greets the dawn shimmering from night’s silent well breaking the stark silence of a winter morning, a single crow calls in sleep’s dark cocoon there are sounds no one else can hear beyond the heart beat, air in lungs and surge of blood in ears from the depths of sleep, muffled ticks are […]

Sprig Spell

I build the spell with witch hazel, a woody frame to brighten gloomy days with spidery flowers in sunset sprays, sublime with spicy scent. I bind the spell with tendrils of evergreen ivy to ward off evil spirits, its heart-shaped leaves glossy with friendship and fidelity. I add some sprigs of rosemary to help you […]

Choking Nature

Humans record artistic impressions of patient Nature’s handiwork in a line of wind-tattered trees, a blanket hem along the skyline and curving sculptured hills, where skylarks rise from barley singing, and dissolve into the darkening welkin. Hills become shadows, the silence palpable over still-hot fields. And yet, in boroughs, towns and cities, greedy humans waste […]