What Kills the Heart

What kills the heart is the lie uncovered,

exposing a different truth to your eyes.

Everything you had thought is other.

You would rather not be so newly wise,

but once you have seen, you cannot devise

any way to twist your perception back

to the old, taken-for-granted world view.

Suddenly you are walking a new track,

unknown, unmapped. There is nothing to do

but journey on, inside this cold new you.

Wearing it Like a Flag

I am snowy, she is steely silver.

My dear late husband's hair was perfect white

like the very best quality paper,

or clean snow – but softer, not blinding bright;

more halo-like, symbol of inner light.

Old blondes are sometimes yellow-streaked. I'm glad

mine didn't go like that. I always had

a hankering for beautiful white hair.

'But you'll look old!' they told me. Well, my bad.

I'm old, snowy and proud; finally there.

Linking to Poets United's Poetry Pantry #326

Learning the Dizain

I find in the dizain, it seems, a form

tailored to my hand: flexible yet firm.

A sensitive glove? Or a tool I hold

for shaping, sculpting? Both, and more – a home

I recently moved into, bringing old

favourite items to augment the new.

I arrange the space around me, walk through

rooms that offer unexpected pleasures,

gaze from windows that show me a new view –

strangely at ease as I claim these treasures.

With thanks to Robert Lee Brewer for introducing me to this form.

Vocation

It's an addiction, said the other son,

the one who hated her. She made him dead

in her mind – though she wept deep, made him gone.

But was he right in that one thing he said?

Her art consumed her. She painted him red

with the face of a demon, to remind

herself how much he meant to be unkind.

It was a necessity for her: art.

(Yet, was it addiction? Or did he blind-

side her – a cold wind that froze her whole heart?)

Refusing a Call

doesn’t happen a lot. Much more often

I leap in feet-first, shouting my delight

as, somewhere, good angels bend and soften

the fabric of reality just right

for me to slip through easily – no fight,

no struggle; only challenge, adventure

enough to say to myself, ‘Yes, I’m sure.’

Poetry, magic, travel, certain men …

I was right to rise to each lovely lure.
If sometimes the end was dark – even then.


('There are some things it is better to begin than to refuse ... even if at the end it should be dark' – J.R.R. Tolkien. One of my favourite quotations.)

Never Mind

'Were you close 

to your father?' 

she asked. 

I said yes.

Hesitated ...

No spark 

of understanding

lit her eyes. 

So I omitted that night:

my drunken shrieking,

wanting to kill him

years

without contact.

'Yes ... a fun Dad

when we were little,'

I said.

Written for Quadrille #19: Spark, at dVerse

The Burgeoning

Spring in Murwillumbah brightens the breeze

now the jacarandas are once again 

purpling, and the Illawarra flame trees

crimsoning streetscape, river bank, bush lane,

and here and there a neighbourhood garden –

now their delicate petals nod and dance

in the quickening air, flutter and prance

to draw us out from desks and dark hallways,

because this, as the season of romance,

reminds us: light and life renew, always.


Shared at Tuesday Platform for 25 Oct. 2016 at 'imaginary garden with real toads'.

Burning

When the flame stretches a tendril of light

and catches the circling moth, there's a flare,

a sudden incandescence, briefly bright ...

then it's as if nothing was ever there –

only silence, only the empty air.

Of you and me, I didn't know which one

was moth, and which flame – until you were gone.

Mourning that death, I thought you the moth, who

in that blazing moment, vanishing, shone.

Then I saw how caught I was. Then I knew.


Linked to Poets United's Poetry Pantry #332

On 12 Dec. 2016 it was announced that this poem came second in the recent Dizain Challenge at Poetic Asides. To read the beautiful winning poem by Jane Shlensky and see the Top 10 list, click here.

To the One Sharing My Bed

I'm here with you, beautiful one, lying down

beside you, sleeping the whole night by you,

grateful to have you as my companion –

as I faithfully choose to be yours too.

You had no such choice; it was imposed: true.

You'd have been homeless; there was only me

to take you in. We started warily.

Now you let me fondle your sleek black fur.

You relax beside me, breathing safety.

Sometimes, I catch a momentary purr.

Now That You Are Gone

Now that you are gone, there's no-one to tell

the small, inconsequential, trifling things 

that fill my days and thoughts – and serve me well 

to fix me to the earth. Well, who needs wings?

The time is not now for those high soarings.

Only, the daily trivia were sweet

in themselves, when I could come and repeat

the details into your listening ear.

I'm happy enough on my earth-bound feet,

but that I wish your step beside me, dear.

She Shows Me

My little cat keeps trying to entice

me to come with her into the garden. 

She beseeches me, with her speaking eyes,

from the doorway. I don't mean to harden

against her. Just, I'm busy; a burden

I am foolish to shoulder, when sunlight

is filling the garden. It's warm and bright

out there, and she is full of eagerness –

not to be there herself; she's there all right –

for me to join her, which is happiness.


Linking to Poets United's Poetry Pantry #325

Revisiting

Remarkable how well I can remember

the taste and texture of fresh raspberries!

The Spring sun, returning each September,

startles awake these childhood memories.

The ceanothus hums anew with bees

as it did on our old front lawn back then;

though both tree and bees were very long gone

when I went back to that good home to see,

fifty years later. And while path, fence, lawn,

even house remained – not one raspberry.


Linked to Poets United's Poetry Pantry #329

Feeling Frustrated

It is a serious issue for me

when I have no internet connection.

I need my hobby group (photography)

plus the whole online poetry section.

Lacking all access is a distraction –

not in a good way. I want to protest.

I want to protest vociferously

and do some violence too, if I’m honest.

I'm too far from the tower, they tell me.

Service is weak – too bad, end of story.

My First Gardenia

My first gardenia bloom has turned up

as if overnight, but there must have been

a tiny bud first: a tight, hidden cup

closing white petals in unremarked green,

allowing them to develop unseen.

Now that the flower appears, part-open,

turning to the sun a face just woken,

I see the big leaves are still leaning near,

lingeringly protective; half cloaking

the soft new life now emerging, now here.

True Confession

They say that women read romantic books

because they cannot get the men they want.

The ones they have lack charm or wealth or looks;

or the dream lover is somehow absent –

busy, distant, even non-existent.

It's true that only since I've been alone,

with no desire to replace the man gone –

yet with desire – I've tried such books myself.

I can please myself, now I'm on my own.
Some thrillers can't yet be left on the shelf.

Continuity

Me and my cat are lounging here again,

enjoying the gentle warmth of mid-Spring

under the porch roof in our back garden,

listening to next-door’s radio sing

cheerful melodious pop – a morning

like so many others, yet each one new ...

old and new – the sun that shone, wind that blew,

clouds that wafted leisurely overhead,

somehow become permanent, though they flew
past; stretching yesterdays, archived not dead.

Wealth

The paintings on my walls

by artist friends.

Photos Andrew took

with his eye for composition, 

and blew up into framed enlargements.

My bookshelves crammed with volumes – 

some you can't get now, and some

I've had since I was a child

and loved since then.

This cat beside me on the couch

grooming herself assiduously –

or elongated in sleep,

bracing her feet on my leg.

The mountains around the skyline;

the sky in all its moods;

the river that runs through town;

the deep blue, foaming ocean.

Memories: black gums and golden wattles, 

the vast lawns of my childhood.

Travels: sunny Bali, cool Peru,

the crags and streams of Scotland.

The Spring flowers now coming out.

My favourite poems and songs.

Loves I've known.

Written for Midweek Motif: Wealth at Poets United

Out Early with Dragon

We walked through before,

needed NOW.

There was dancing.

We smiled bitter sugar.

A long time

in the already ...

couldn’t stay always.

Great pangs ripped me.

I don’t give tempting;

I discover will.

An experiment with erasure, using today's 'morning pages' (which, in full, were fairly banal). 
I have tried to suggest meaning where actually there is none.  

Murwillumbah

Surrounding blue, deepening to navy, 

drapes the horizon like a ribbon – long,

undulating, irregular, wavy.

Our mountain sentinels are standing strong.

As daylight now fades with the last birdsong,

the river slowly darkens, and the sky

contracts to one fiery point that will die

in a white-hot blaze; as ibis fly straight

for their nests, quick arrows … so likewise I
find home in this little town: a sweet fate.

Written for the latest Micro Poetry prompt at 'imaginary garden with real toads. 
The form is a dizain.

Deep Blue Spaces

In a space between

the every-days of my life –

my here life –

I dive into the sky

to fly to a party.

'Now you can say

you're a jet-setter,'

my son declares.

He thinks my life

began at his birth.

Island-bred

I smile, remembering 

many flights 

out and back,  

and the oceans.

55 words for Flash 55 PLUS! – the concept of Space 

at 'imaginary garden with real toads'.