Tree fern laced sky;
Feathered frond umbrella
Sheds no rain.
Pohutukawa–
Pollen-tipped pompom brings
Holiday cheer.
poetry
Enrique’s Violin
Music
Wrung from a life of want.
Wrought of
Cedro amargo,
But not bitter.
Wrought of
Machete
And Imagination,
Of sheer desire for beauty.
Your maker a poet,
A dreamer,
Inventor.
You made the people dance
And forget
The crops washed away,
The sick child,
The dead baby.
If only for an hour.
Sing and dance
With the discarded
Rubbish of life.
Sing and dance
With me.
Haiku: Listening to the clock in my office
Clock ticks time away
Marking what I have not done.
Fail, fail, fail, fail, fail.
_____
Clock ticks time away
Marking what is yet to come.
Soon, soon, soon, soon, soon.
_____
Clock ticks time away
Marking what I do and say.
Now, now, now, now, now.
Screen Time
Friday is National Poetry Day, so all of this week’s posts will be in verse. Happy Poetry Day to you. May all your couplets rhyme.Â
Screen time
And TVs
And sports after school.
Texting
And YouTube
And try to be cool.
Selfies
And shopping
It’s not hard to see
That no one has time
For the sky, for the sea.
No time to sit
No time to be free
And ponder a grass blade
Think of a bee.
Well
You can take your
Damned cell phone
Toss it into a pond
Of mud
And of stargazing
I am more fond.
Your selfies
And shopping
Are just like a cage
For the mind and the spirit,
The words on this page.
So
Come out
Come out
Come into the sun
Learn to count raindrops
And barefoot we’ll run
Through meadows
And forests
And rivers and streams
We’ll find what we’ve lost
We’ll capture our dreams.
Stories of a Rock
You sit in my hand and tell me stories.
I am not as I appear
Stories of ice and fire.
My colours fade here, away from my home
Stories from deep within the earth.
Only anoint me in the sea and you will see my true self
Stories of heat and pressure,
Once smooth, featureless, grey
Of torturous change,
Violence tore at my very structure, squeezed me until I wept
Of slow cooling,
My tears still glisten, and trace my scars with brilliance
A condensation of minerals,
I glow with the translucence of accumulated stress
The story of your journey from crucible to mountaintop.
The angles of my fractured existence plain upon my face
The story of your tumbling fall to the sea.
My pain worn smooth from repetition
Tell me your story.
Let me rest now
Your whole story.
Soothed by abrasion
So like mine.
Slowly giving up my identity to the sea
Winter Solstice
The shortest day of the year dawned as it should,
Slowly.
Night wrapped its cold wet embrace
over Earth,
reluctant to let go.
Mine
Cloud and Fog conspired
with Night,
spread out
between Sun and Earth,
a blindfold to Sun’s brilliance.
What will you give us, Sun?
What will you give us to go away?
Sun lit Fog to blinding yellow.
I will give you Fire
Fog swirled and churned.
Wisps curled into eddies,
turned pink and gold.
I am beautiful!
Enraptured, Fog did not see
He was being consumed.
Sun turned her eyes to cloud.
The same for you?
Cloud bowed and parted.
Day began at last.
Darkness Rises
Photo: Egres73, Wikimedia Commons
Darkness does not fall.
Instead, rises
from shadows grown long
in the evening sun.
Landscape darkens
before sky.
Dark fills up the hollows,
the valleys,
the chook house,
(where birds rustle their feathers
to let the dark settle in close).
Finally, deep night
Rises.
Not too deep–
I can still see the stars.
Walking Around Town at Dinnertime
Kids on the trampoline
Windows open
Chicken, potatoes, and minted peas
waft to the street.
Apartment block
Curtains flap from
Second storey windows
Sending frying bacon
And curry
Skittering through the air.
In front of the rest home
Tinned beans
And tea
Sit heavy,
Cling to my shoes.
Past the shops
Grease from
Restaurant fryers
Coats every surface
And makes the sidewalk slick.
Beer and cigarettes
Billow from the pub.
I turn towards home
Where soup and bread
Pool in the potholes of the driveway.
Rangitata
Boulders like
Some great migration of hump-backed
Turtles
Lumber through the shallows.
Wading
Only to the knees.
Wary
Of the laughing burble of
The deep channel beyond.
Their cousins crowd the opposite bank.
Watch.
One will push another in
If you wait long enough.
Ode to a Rainy Day
Rain, Rain, here today
A fine excuse, inside we’ll stay.
Play a game,
Bake a cake,
Do some sewing,
The yard’s a lake.
Drip and drop, it patters down.
Might be a day to go to town.
Catch a movie,
See some art,
Stop off for
A neenish tart.
Paddocks brown all get a drink.
Best to stay inside, I think.
Read a book,
Drink some tea,
Have a chat,
Just you and me.
Robinne Weiss 