It is more than orange
and yellow put together.
This explosion of warmth
and feeling
fire-working my emotions,
serotonin my brain.
I can taste it,
overwhelmingly…
it’s like… buttery Magic!
Don’t you dare stop smiling
or I’ll tickle you.
Please, tell me again
the reason for Everything.
More at http://paultristram.blogspot.co.uk/.
Between melting and freezing
The soul’s sap quivers.
At this
The darkest time
I think of ancient lunar engravings
At Knowth, County Meath.
(Looking up they saw in the night sky
Phases of the moon)
I remember meeting Seamus Heaney
At a reading in Dublin
How he inscribed
The title page of his book
“Shine the light”
Sending me home on wings.
—–
Epiphany morning.
A bright day promised.
Twig shadows
On the bedroom wall.
Delayed awhile
In the afternoon
(Small commitments
Mundane tasks)
But managed a walk
Before sunset.
Saw the first snowdrops
Rooks hankering home.
A straggle of middle-aged men,
instruments spread before them
and their music, one already
lighting a pipe, and the smoke spirals
in front of the flat-capped pianist
at the black piano.
The signal, a private joke,
and when the laughter subsides
the clarinet leads, tentative, wayward,
slowly finding its exquisite way.
Trombones join in, and the guitar,
the trumpet, the sax.
The room itself swayed by rhythm,
each note urging another on,
a melody, and the melody backtracking,
moving from ferment to reflection,
from motion to stillness, it is
everywhere, it is nowhere at all.
The gleaming silver drums,
the musician’s early brush strokes
like the first lingering caress
of a delicate lovemaking. Afterwards
the thunder, the turmoil, the anger
before the hush – and then the song.
The Jazz Man sings. The clarinet
is calm, and the trumpet.
The guitar sits easy on its stand.
The trombones rest, side by side.
Even the seething drums are silent
as the Jazz Man sings.
That very true sensation
in dream, in utter unity,
so much in full, how
so often in a maturing rise,
in sweet constancy, in desire due,
you gave and gave
to make me cry
where and how long
you went away on tour
leaving me waiting
for your return
any time when the
dream drew to an end.
I clearly see the Art Deco clock
In that thirties Magnet Cinema
The brilliant silk unveiling of the screen.
—–
Frail roses like the old
Cling to the branch.
There is tenderness at the root of things.
—–
The child’s eyes open
To shore rock ground to sand
Gentle, tide soaked slopes and mounds.
As I do
and do things,
not in ways
they think fit,
in times contrary
to my wishes,
I find disjointed,
they in their
supreme certainty
murmur in confused
delirium of how
they need think
and act better,
to be sure
certainties were never
uncertainties looking
upsettingly different.
Foolish to be envious
when a gull hovers
overhead,
or skims across
wild, white horses.
Maybe celebrate
the breathlessness of wings
as you travel transatlantic,
a white Greenland under your lap.
Or when that owl
swoops through night sky
so that a mouse will die
remember the placid
wings of chickens,
trammelled, marinated,
wrapped tight,
in a local deli.
Choose whatever wildness you will
but first read the planet,
word by splintered word,
those fish pooling
in the rocks
where children play,
the tiger tracked down
and mauled by men.
At the close of day
see if your own numb skin,
is any match
for the cosmos,
its bewitching idiocies,
packed continents
where dinosaurs once wandered,
footprints too tiny
to discern.
Dance pursues her.
Those neat feet
giggle.
Her toes hunt
new ground
in a ballet pirouette.
She taps life
into pavements,
colours the sun.
In her dream the long arm
of the jungle
is shaking her free
of trees.
Beyond the ivy-clung forest stones
her hermit’s hearth does glow
with the scent of wild herbs
and other hedgerow matter.
‘Tis bottling night again,
the ladle is overemployed,
with the rhythm of eye measurements,
dipping and diving with the flow.
Simmering time’s for ladder knotting,
whittling worms out of the soul.
Busy yet still slipping backwards,
onion rolling in your wake,
time and distance are comfort’s friends
but seldom get down to the root.
Rubbing fern juice into her hair
with nimble fingers quick and true.
Frowning, she bobs and weaves
all ’round the magnetic target
which she cannot view remove.
More at http://paultristram.blogspot.co.uk/.
The violence is happening
the way crackers pose as
bombs, is sign of one more
war– on streets, in restaurants and show rooms.
Even mannequins are not safe.
Pose as one
but be sure that violence
is not averted.
Trees spell doom.
The skies are unearthly
gawkish desires are truth
and away from their circumference
hovers the ghost.