poem – Page 83 – don't confuse the narrator

noche de san juan

I dreamed of you last night and woke
to moonlight, sheet-tangled feet
cat-twisted and cold.

I drowsed again, through decades, slipped
between cities and crossed continents,
embracing and embraced,
now chasing and now chased,
no pause between the kisses passed
from partner on to partner
down through the yearning years.

I dreamed of you last night
and woke to moonlight.

(St John’s Eve – Midsummer Night – is celebrated across Spain with fire jumping in the street and general festivities. It’s supposed to be a time of powerful magic, and seemed a suitable title for this slightly chaotic dream poem.)

midsummer night

I just pulled one of my grandmother’s poetry books from the shelf. There aren’t that many of them, but they are all inscribed “Midsummer Day” and were gifts from her husband on her birthday. This particular book – Poems by Thomas Hood – is dated exactly 100 years ago.

My favourite Hood poem is The Bridge of Sighs, but that’s too long to post here, so I’ll settle for one that’s appropriate to the time as well as the date:
Continue reading “midsummer night”

dry’ku III

Ragged leaf veils
geometrical precision:
butterfly eggs.

In case anyone cares what sort of leaf it is, it’s a kiwi leaf, and the ones above are grape vines. And there is, indeed, something odd about the chaotic tumble of vines juxtaposed with the tiny perfect arrangement of insect eggs.

june

The sun slopes down into a summer evening
and hulking mountains strive to shed
the last rags of snow.

Sadly, the light has been all wrong the last few evenings to take a better picture, but the snow is still clearly visible in this one that I took one morning last week. There’ve been a lot fewer clouds for the last couple of days- it was positively hot outside at 9am today – and, although there are still a few shreds of white up on the peaks, I don’t think they’ll last many more days.

ever upwards

Looking at the front page of the blog, I realise that the last three posts are accompanied by pictures taken looking up at the sky, and I am reminded of a poem from my childhood.

The Rhyme of Dorothy Rose by Pauline Frances Camp starts with the line:

Dorothy Rose had a turned-up nose

That’s all I could remember of the poem, although I was clear about the story it told: rather than bemoaning her snub nose, the little girl decides to tilt her whole personality and attitude to match and becomes a delightful person because of it.
Continue reading “ever upwards”