I ... entered the poem of life, whose purpose is ... simply to witness the beauties of the world, to discover the many forms that love can take. (Barabara Blackman in 'Glass After Glass')

These poems are works in progress and may be updated without notice. Nevertheless copyright applies to all writings here and all photos (which are either my own or used with permission). Thank you for your comments. I read and appreciate them all, and reply here to specific points that seem to need it — or as I have the leisure. Otherwise I reciprocate by reading and commenting on your blog posts as much as possible.

8 January 2015

The Seventh Night of the Year

Pale faces thronging the dark
the dream only fragments now,
fag ends or tangles of smoke ...
athletic bodies fighting
fierce and fast, like acrobats.
The dim light caught shaven heads,
naked limbs white against grey.

Or tumbling on a trapeze
higgledy-piggledy, but
there was still room for singing.
Singing and swinging alive,
disappearing in distance.
I was caught, one leg fastened
by intertwining others.

Perilous extrication
leaving me fully alone,
leaving me lying alone
on a floor I could not see,
surrounded by smoke too thick
to discern any image.
A distant smell of burning.

Seven turns of the clock face,
seven lean hours of the night.
Seven number of challenge.
Seven explores the unseen.
I woke. My cat on the bed
leaping, pouncing on nothing,
continued to wrestle air.

The seventh night of the year
I made a spell for dreaming.
Did it gather all the dreams
dreams of the politicians,
dreams of teenagers mingling,
pooling inside my one skull
in frantic kaleidoscope?

I remember a woman.
My dress was red and purple.
'These,' she said, 'are the colours
designating a priestess:
from base chakra up to crown
where the light collects and blooms
like an explosive flower.

(When I was seven I knew
I would always be alone
inside the populous town
and the warm family home.
For why? I was the dreamer
'head in the clouds' and my feet
trailing behind, straying slow.)


At Poets United, our Midweek Motif is January Seventh and we are asked to write anything to do with the number seven. In this piece the structure echoes the theme: each line, including title, has seven syllables; and there are seven verses, each of seven lines.

22 comments:

  1. Whew! Rosemary! The questions in the fifth start a vortex and all swirls round!
    "Perilous extrication
    leaving me fully alone,"
    Dreamer in red and purplle, molecule of possibilites, never leave us!

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    1. I totally love this poem!

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    2. Thank you. I'm very glad.

      All true. I really did have that dream last night; someone did say that about the red and purple; etc. — but the way it came together seems to me wild and weird.

      Oh well, I did want to get away from banal!

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  2. The chakras and the priestess caught my attention. May you find that spiritual fire within.

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  3. You were really inspired Rosemary. This poem is perfection. Enjoyed the message as well as the form.

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  4. Interesting and colorful.

    Thanks for coming by. We will hope Dante's version of hell is just that his version.

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  5. Thank you. That poem is truly terrific. Well done, Rosemary.

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  6. WOW! A spectacular write, and then I read that the lines have seven syllables too? Wowzers, kiddo. I love the dress, the colors of the priestess....and love the ending, knowing you would always be alone because you were the dreamer. Me, too, kiddo.

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  7. I think all of our imaginations have grown quite a bit since we were seven. I know mine has a little bit. I like how you wrote this poem as if it was a dream, because it is distant memories. Good correlation there.

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  8. I wonder how many would admit to feeling this way. I know I do as dreams and reality mingle in that neither world, struggling to reach either but in the process being enlightened.

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  9. I remember being seven. And I had the same consciousness as I do now. I was born
    old:)

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    Replies
    1. Maybe we are all, always, the same age on the inside.

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  10. Wow! This poem sings with color and mystery.

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  11. What a carnival of memory..sounds like a restless night...but maybe a productive one? Certainly poetically it is

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  12. Wonderful poem, very vivid and thought provoking.

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