The Patterns Change

Since you left us

rain lasts longer,

monsoonal downpours

spread further south

more often,

while the coldest 

extremities of the continent 

burn.

I

turn my mind away

from such concerns,

watching instead

myself and cats

gradually alter

our small routines,

in your large absence.

Submitted for Poets United's Verse First: Patterns

Graffiti Makers

graffiti makers

wear anonymous clothes

jeans and hoodies

hide their faces

sign their names

their pseudonyms

some go for blocks

of heavy black

angular sharp

others are bright

with wild colour

i'm in that mob

Submitted for dVerse Meeting the Bar #21

Size Doesn't Matter

In this long monsoon, each evening,
tiny flies
appear in the house as from nowhere:
floating spots.
Each morning they are all corpses,
little black dots
littering every available surface —
their tiny lives
exhausted by the large event
of stinging me
with more ferocity than you could credit.

Submitted for Poets United's Poetry Pantry #139

Two Fibs

Grass Grows

Grass

grows

I can't

believe it.

Grass grows, and I smile,

my mouth lipsticked in pretty pink.

It is already five months since you died and left me.

Life goes on, as we're told. Even I go on, into a morning of birdsong and grass.

The Solitary Life

I

am

sitting here

filing my nails

and simultaneously reading my computer.

It's a wet day outside; there's a hum of white noise around me.

The cats curl on the bed, my coffee is at my elbow, I'm warm. The solitary life, too,  can be cosy.

In response to a prompt from Verse First, at Poets United.

Adapted from Wiipedia:

In mathematics, the Fibonacci numbers or Fibonacci series or Fibonacci sequence are the numbers in the following integer sequence: 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21, etc. or 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21, etc. By definition, the first two numbers in the Fibonacci sequence are 0 and 1 (or 1 and 1) and each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two.

In the above poems, the first works on syllable count, the second on word count.

Fibonacci poems are also known as fibs. And I like to pun.

Cleaning the Mind

The rain is intermittent

its music cannot hold,

the sad cafes are emptying

along the river bank,

the sky's washed fresh.

A boatman paddles

thinner into distance,

buffalos loll

to their ears in wet,

the paddies are pale gold.

A garden open to the eye,

a beach without a footprint.

Clear and straight, I journey

back to a time of light

no grime obscures.

Published in Universe Cat, Pariah Press (Melb.) 1985 

and Secret Leopard, Alyscamp Press (Paris) 2005.

Submitted for dVerse OpenLinkNight #84. 
Alas, I was too late to submit it for dVerse Poetics: Leonard Cohen and Place, where it clearly belongs.

Once upon a time I had a very romantic affair, in Bali, with the young man who first introduced me to the poems, novels and songs of Leonard Cohen. He used to sing Cohen's 'Suzanne' to me, implying that I was his Suzanne. This poem was written years after that relationship ended, when the happy memory helped me deal with some unpleasantness in my life. It's a very old poem now, but perfect for that prompt.

The Bend in the Road

At the bend in the road, hesitate

before you venture around it.

Look, if you can, through the dark

under those trees up there —

but it’s hard to see.

Beyond that bend

are secrets.

Beware!

Wait….

Day's End

The summer heat has cooled a little now.

I sit out in my usual spot in the garden.

Over there behind the French windows

is where you used to lie, those last months

when you were mostly bed-ridden. The curtains,

closed, allow me to imagine you are still there,

that the thread of awareness and connection

still runs between us — invisible, unbreakable,

palpable. But of course it's not so. You are gone,

you are more insubstantial than air. I, here, enjoy

for myself the sunny garden, the stillness, the sweet

air. The light falls down through the trees, as if

in benediction ... then gradually grows colder.

One white flower adorns the top of the vine.

They bloom and drop repeatedly, those blossoms.

Submitted for dVerse OpenLinkNight #83

Two for the Price of One

(In response to a prompt about building up a poem with an extra word in every line. Rather than attempting to sustain this indefinitely, I made some variations.)

Practical Problems

Even

someone old

with mild dementia

and limited leg movement

can get behind your back

to dab disinfectant on insect bites

or scratch those pesky itches for you,

the ones you just can't quite reach yourself.

Alas,

that person

has moved on 

and gone beyond limitations —

his own, that is — freed.

Of course I'm glad for him;

wouldn't have had him linger and suffer.

But I'm left with itches I can't scratch.

Earth Walker

Deliberately

she describes

a huge arc,

with long, slow steps

which she paces in silence.

'I have two days,' she says,

'in which to listen and find within

the pattern that I must trace, walking here,

imprinting an invisible symbol on this piece of land.

It will be a portal, hidden here in these hills.'

Hidden there in her hills, we leave her practising intently.

There is nothing we can see to do there,

nothing that might help her in any way.

Our inner vision does not show us

such images, nor can we hear;

not as she hears, anyway. 

Sometimes, though, I wonder

who traverses portals —

entering, or 

leaving?

Submitted for Poets United's Verse First: One Word at a Time
Also submitted for dVerse Poetics — The Art of Letting Go

The Goodbye Ritual

On the night of the full moon last

I did the ritual —

I called the Powers to witness

my long-delayed, formal goodbye

to the dear man who has gone into my past.

Not that I could see the full moon.

It was utterly black, that sky —

not even pin-prick stars.

Heavy, relentless, the rain fell and fell.

Light would not pierce that veil, not soon.

So I came indoors,

and from far and high

I called them all —

the elements, the God, the Goddess —

into my bedroom, which used to be ours.

And there I said goodbye to my beloved;

a final, deliberate farewell

within a circle of sacred space,

watched by the moon’s invisible eye …

admitting at last that he is dead.

This form, invented by David James, is called Karousel

Poem submitted for dVerse OpenLinkNight #82

Published in THE d'VERSE ANTHOLOGY, 2013.

Dead

Oh, I am ice inside, remembering

our love's now merely sad remembering.

My times with you are ghosts. They waver, fade,

although I crave the hard remembering.

I can't retain the past, though I have tried.

Yet what is left beside remembering?

Our warm and melting love now frozen solid,

it's time to put aside remembering.

Everything we said and all we did

is nothing now, mere dead remembering.

It's time. I must accept that you have died —

ah, must I? — nor abide remembering.

That cold word, dead, is loud inside my head.

Remembrance drives me mad ... remembering ...

Note: It is traditional in a ghazal to use one's own name, pseudonym, or some derivation of the name in the last line. So I'm there, slightly disguised unless you know your Shakespeare.

Submitted for dVerse FormForAll: Ghazal sonnet

and Poets United's Verse First — Icy

Also submitted in May 2019 for dVerse's Poetry form: Ghazal