What is Love
A softening
of every hard thing
An open hand.
A listening ear.
A lightening
and light-seeking.
A superpower.
A truth.
A talisman
A trump card.
A verb
not a noun.
siobhan
Hour Nine
Harvest
Cinnamon leaves gather
in a hush of early dusk.
The last of summer moths flock
to the lightbulb on the porch
wings insistent on warmth.
In the air a slight tremor, a shiver as September
takes it’s place at the helm of the year
and elbows August out.
The moon as red as a beet
peeks from the clouds
its blushing face a mirage
drowning
in a bucket of water.
Hour Eight
Image prompt
Beach Song
Stars alight in summer sky
wishes fly on ember wings
night dissolves to day.
Hour 7
August
Sunflower boon.
The perfect alchemy of light.
Soft touch of summer dusk.
August’s leaving grace.
A swing set for one.
A setting made for two.
Hour Six
Peering over a flat earth!
Cusp
The sea pouring into stars.
A waterfall of sweeping light.
The mist of dawn
collected in a glowing orb.
Moon, upside-down, floats by,
a silver-pocked rock.
Thousands of galaxies whistle by
in neon flashes.
A stop-gap of black, rushing absence of sound and then –
the square root of pie,
the ghost of Einstein
sorting an unending pile
of lost socks.
Hour Five
Mystery poem
Ghosted
Messages made of ellipsis bluffs:
talk to you later, I’ll let you know soon…
Tomorrows that never came.
Conversations like dandelion fluff.
All the time, there was something vacant
in your eyes, a tightness in every smile.
Excuses like a row of missing teeth.
I ignored the blankness, let it grow;
you were hiding something
the nothingness I now know.
When the spectre came to call –
I wasn’t shocked at all.
Hour Four
Marriage
A tunnel
filled with light.
An amalgamation of selves.
A bond, a pact, a partnership.
The perfection of love.
Freedom.
Or
A tunnel
filled with darkness.
An obliteration of the self.
A duty, a deal, a convenience.
The pretence of love.
A prison.
Hour Three
Image prompt
Mercury Rising
In that dustbowl summer
we learned and relearned again
the musculature of dream.
Bright horizon, future a golden hum.
Heat was a verb we exercised with
no caution; hearts heedless
to colder climates, shifts in wayward weather.
Now a feather floats on a scorched breeze,
a memory alights
and infinity spins on a dime.
While somewhere, millions of miles above
Mercury spins around the sun
it’s burning core visible
on soft summer nights.
In all my wishing well days
it was you
the darkness sang for,
no rusted coin or funneled depth of thought.
Firefly heart, stop, restart.
The circumference of time
a linear knot
we cannot unravel.
But. Bring me back. Je suis desoleé.
In this arid landscape
there is only dust; the detritus
of those summer dreams
whirling devils in the wind,
the bones of what has been
rattling around in my dreams.
While Mercury, still sun-stunned,
drags it’s molten heart in blinding orbit
around the burning sun.
Hour Two
Image prompt
Perspective
Sometimes the ladder into the sky
is invisible; (until closer inspection).
Sometimes invented; (until closer utilisation).
Sometimes a blank wall
is the best beginning.
Sometimes up is the worst
misconception.
(c) Siobhán Mc Laughlin
Hour One
Picture prompt;
September
If I could stay here
and make this crossroads my home
I would.
Before decisions delineate paths
and fate separates from its course.
It could be cosy
in these woods
in the middle of nowhere
between here and there
the endless fugue of somewhere
not yet known;
leeway, midway
in September
when the last light burns its fire
before the leaves change
and darkness lays its claim. (more…)