Monthly Archives: July 2022

Water to spare

‘Water to spare’

~~~

A dog’s tail, an empty chair, an empty terracotta pot. Anticipation. Lush. Inside outside interaction. Who waters? Who sits? Who is the sleeping collie waiting for?

~

Yellow wall and red geraniums, green growth of many shades and shapes. Who chose the vibrant warm wall colour? A corner of a cane table with text heavy folded paper. A broadsheet. Who reads?

~

Can we guess the occupants’ race or creed or country? Could it be North America or Europe? It doesn’t seem parched enough for Africa or most of Asia or Australia. Water to spare for pretty household plants, a collie in the house not herding sheep or cattle. Time enough for reading the Times.

~

Just a glance at a small corner of a lucky life lifts and heals my heavy heart.

~~~

This is an ‘ekphrastic’ poem, ie a prose poem written in response to an image

I have been learning about different poetic forms from Alison Smith who runs the free Facebook group ‘Womens School of Metamorphosis, Radical change from inside out’

https://www.facebook.com/groups/wsmradicalchangeinsideout/?ref=share

Flora

Foot bruised by an accident of enthusiasm

I can sit on the salvaged Parker Knoll recliner

pondering in splendid regality.

Spider Queen surveying her domain

of seven growing decades

Through wide opened double doors

On the hottest day of herstory

~

Up close (and so personal)

A bee fusses the scented pelargonium

on Dad’s old hand built coffee table

Marquetry stained by decades

of over enthusiastic watering

A fly dies in the cobwebbed corner

~

Foreground of swaying

frothy alchemilla mollis

Mum’s favourite coloniser of stone patios

and steps, perfect foil for sweet

Pastel pink blowsy Summer Wedding

rose blooms, stark against darker shadow

Memories of those North facing gardens

~

Backdrop of top heavy sycamore crowns

Rustling with seed jewels

Harbouring raucous caws of picus picus

Five for silver or six for gold

Most likely seven for those family secrets

Never been told

~

In the midfield young rowans

reach adolescent feathered arms

Up to the light. Early years stunted

by the North wind

Now finding strong footholds

Deep in the Donegal granite.

~~~

Heatwave

Heatwave

~

a Sunday in July, midday in a heatwave

‘caravan beach’ fills with campers and tents

~

sultry as summer in the south of France

Donegal unused to this weather

~

pull down black blinds to the South

open all windows North

~

dogs pant on the slate floor in the hall

fill water bowls almost hourly

~

solar panels reach maximum

fill a bath for watering later

~

so glad of the breeze from the sea

lifting the heavy geranium heads

~

swifts on the red endangered list

guillemots declining steeply

~

neighbour’s wayward cat has returned

the Times warns of two thousand extra deaths

~~~

Becoming crone

hair shaggy and long, yellowish grey

mane of wild mare on the moor

~

sun brown spotted hands, neck crepey

tales of giant turtle’s travels

~

paddling feet flattened and broad

limpet lumps clamping the granite in clusters

~

eyes fading sky blue to cloud grey

rowan bark silvered bearing bright berries

~

mind wanders, meanders, drifts dreaming

spider spinning out silky concentric circles

~~~

Those of you who would like to see more of my writing, I have joined Substack:

https://lizdoyle.substack.com?r=fibbn&utm_medium=ios