In Love

When did the starlight happier seem than now?
The evening’s quiet, when so full of peace?
How does heaven seem so near to me
Now, when I have wished away my heart?

Why has the night so sober been?
Why has my mind been reason’s moon?
That this poor sun has felt so long a night
The bark of last year’s growth has now unveiled
A green and stripling age of mind;
Eloping with this redder, browner blaze
Of hopeful, living love.

The two paintings above are by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828  – 1882).   His model, who he considered his muse, and who later became his wife, was Elizabeth Siddal (1829 – 1862). 

Some Times

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Some times it snows
Swirling in white
Drifts in the night
Pearls of soft light

Some days it rains.
Wetness unceasing
Clouds are releasing
The heavens above

And some times the wind
Moans through the trees
Only heaven sees
How life will react

For life will go on
Regardless of me
Not till I cease to be
Will the world be set free

But always it shows
How godliness grows
And nobody knows
How all life will end

On Moon-gazing

At such a sight
As the moon at night
So high, so bright
My thoughts take flight
The sheer delight
Of its vibrant white
Its pungent bite
Some day might
Emit its light
To end my plight
Leaving me quite
Without foresight
Indeed contrite

All this I write
So slight
And yet, so recondite

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Embers of my Dreams

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My lockdown life has fuelled a fire
a fire of the imagination
It burns the strongest in my dreams
its brightest light at night
an ever flickering conflagration
half hidden from my sight

For when I wake
I feel its kick
I tremble with the loss
of leaving that other clouded world
left picking through its embers

There where strangers meet as friends
where lovers lose their once-held power
where every tree meant more to me
with every passing hour

But why when shrouded in dreamland’s mists
do such recovered images
disappear with wakefulness
refuse to linger
rush away
leaving only a taste
a memory risked
asecond chance missed
a taste of what could have been
lost in that fleeting insubstantial dream

New Year – A Two Word Tale – #8

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New year
Cold night
Snow falls
All white

Hot fire
Scots pine
Church choir
Mulled wine

Bright hearth
Warm heart
First foot
New start

 

My ‘Two Word’ Verses

Number eight  in my series of short verses 

 

 

 

The Lark

I miss you when I wake
From the dark dreams of my night. 
I miss your being there
As the morning streams with light. 

I miss you as I walk
Beside the swift and swollen river.
I feel your loss intensely 
It’s not cold that makes me shiver. 

Where are you now I wonder,
I can’t find you when I search.
I lost you in that springtime
In that faith redeeming church. 

Your lark ascends each morning 
As the sun grows in the sky.
I pray that when I follow
I will find you by and by.

 

 

Night Murmurs

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Night Murmurs

 

A whimper came to me at night,
A murmur soft as a dream.
It crept into my consciousness,
As would a silk moonbeam.

This phantom sound,
This covert cry,
Caused my heart to still;
It seemed to me
It had to be
More than just a sigh.

A threat,
A promise,
A pleading voice,
A start or a cessation?
A signal meant for me alone –
Oblation or Damnation?

I held my heart in readiness,
Wept when no guidance came;
Waited too long,
The moment gone;
As ever I am to blame.

 

 

Please Note:  Over the next few weeks, whilst I am downsizing and moving house, I shall  hopefully be posting only two blogs each week, rather than my usual daily publication.  I hope to return to more frequent postings in a few weeks time.

 

Night Fears

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The night has its fears,
It is fraught with mistrust;
I lie in a mist,
My mind swathed in dust.

When sleep will not come,
When rest is denied,
My mind is a playground,
Sense cast aside.

Struggling with thoughts,
Unbidden, intense;
A barrage of cares
That hardly make sense.

Then fears invade, 
Not something I sought.
What happened to reason,
To logical thought?

So I wait for the morning,
The return of the light,
To banish the tension 
And put fears to flight. 

NEXT

”Quietus’ … WHB (1956)

 

When the Quietus comes
Then is the Night
The end of my Beginning
The start of The NEXT

That infinite Unknown
That never wished for Future
So far safely hidden

Forestalling the Pain
Though shrouding the Bliss
Of what has passed

By drawing Life’s Curtain
Its obscuring Haze
Over its ever-darkening Window

It becomes the Harbinger
Of that Unmapped Ocean
Horizon’s New Dawn

Only so am I granted
That indeterminate Vision
Of the meaning of Destiny
Of what lies NEXT

 

‘Night Marriage’

[  # 81 of My Favourite Short Poems  ]

Night Marriage   . . .  by   Carol Ann Duffy

When I turn off the light
and the dark mile between us
crumples and falls,
you slip from your self to wait for me in my sleep,
the face of the moon sinking Into a cloud;

or I wake bereaved
from the long hours
I spend in your dreams,
an owl in the forest crying its soft vowels,
dark fish swimming under the river’s skin.

Night marriage. The small hours join us,
face to face as we sleep and dream;
the whole of the huge night is our room.

Re-printed from ‘The Times’,  Saturday September 3^rd, 2005