Commonword Blogs

I read an early version of this when I came to the writers' group last summer. It's undergone quite a few changes since then....

Modern window frames
Verdant foliage
Forests rain
ferns curl
fine vines grab green air
beckon
fecund spiders, lazy flies

strange familiar fronds
trumpet players’ fast fingers
Finding fluttering rhythm

Spanish moss, pale as seaweed
Shrouds hirsute hackberries
Leaf skeleton hands, mottled dark veins
translucent green palms upwards
gesture of innocence

Below the dank armpits of valley oaks
marshmallow fungus
clings besotted

Thanks everyone for all your comments. Here's version 2....

Until I call your name
you speak with glass voice
make my slow sonnets fade and curl

The dry trees crackle with
unconscious blossoming

Conscious of brittle bones, of cracked teeth, sand scatters
It echoes dust

Will your grieving bed prevail?
Direct dry tongues to dying towns?

Your eager fingers grasp - and clutch
life measured with tales told, words sold
And how to calculate the weight of feathers, or of gold?

You unfurl dusty half-deserted sheets

Until I call your name
you speak with glass voice
make my words into blank parchment
The dry trees crackle with
unconscious blossoming

Conscious of sand in eyelashes, rock shifts and creaks
It echoes dust
Will your stone cold bed prevail?

Direct descendent, indirect lineage
Your eager fingers grasp and clutch
life measured in cornstarch coffeespoons
And how to calculate the weight of feathers, weight of gold
You unravel dusty half-deserted sheets
Will your stone cold bed prevail?

Call of frogs and gulls, of meditation bells
It spreads through the sky like locusts

This is an edited version of a poem I've been working on:

Make Love not War

Two women
One from the North of England
Saleha was her name
her parents good Muslims from Pakistan
she scattered Yorkshire vowels
drove a red, convertible babe-magnet

The other, her lover
from the South
we’ll call her Sangeeta,
her parents good Hindus from India
with a good Hindu daughter
Concentrating on work
Never chasing the boys

So, I've worked on a rewrite for this - taking into account comments about making it less of a list, more grammatical and incorporating the relationship of the writer to the 'shaver' etc. I think it may need a little cutting down at this point - not quite sure about stanza 4 and 5, I'm kind of using them as a break to switch gears but it feels a bit clunky. But it's all part of the process! I heard William Trevor describe writing as being like sculpture for him.