F 1.14. Erius The_Harp_of_Erin’,_oil_on_canvas_painting_by_Thomas_Buchanan_

F 2.14. The wild Hunt

F 3.14 Unlucky Jackalope

Harp Song (F1.14 Erius The Harp of Ireland)

Clear notes race aloft,
caught in stormy updraft –
tumultuous song disorders the sky
and draws the ocean high
to sing at the fair goddess’ feet

Her fingers glide across the strings
Plucking, stroking, teasing,
easing them into song
that sings the land alive.
A paeon to Ireland.

Her sacred harp
croons Carrauntoohil in minor key,
trills sweet heather scent, soprano notes
warbling in the key of summer breeze.
Below the tune, in endless hum, she thrums
the bass line of ocean,
offering a ceaseless pounding, sounding chorus.
Symphonic, harmonic song of Ireland.

Jacqueline Dempsey-Cohen @boscoedempsey

Fionn mac Cumhaill remembers Sadhbh

Some storm skies fill with hunting clouds,
the snarling and baying of men and hounds
through the dark of winter nights,

gods who gallop with faces of war,
cold as corpses, booted, spurred,
spear in hand and death in their throats,

while the poor folk cower beneath the hail
of hoofbeats across the flimsy roof. Death comes
to those who dare look on those wild faces.

Another sky, restless, carries an old king
on the clamour of his warriors, his dogs and horses,
his sad, solemn face raised to peer through the night,

through the eternal forest, watery eyes straining
for a glimpse of his lost love, yearning for those days,
happy perhaps, careless certainly,

before her deer hooves skittered away,
and his life lost its way in bitter blood,
and the darkness of her enchantment.

-Merril D Smith

Riders in the Clouds (Inspired by image 2.14, The Wild Hunt)

Now the hooves,
how they clip clappity clap,
thunder boom and
snap the clouds of black and grey
in half across the sky,

the gods astride the massive beasts,
with swords and pikes, they thrust, and ride,
wide-eyed and hair whip-blowing
sparking arcs
of light across the sky.

We have made them in our image,
full of jealousy, anger, and passion,
and in our carelessness, we’ve given them
too much might.

Tempests, dark nights of the soul,
the sun chariot skyward glides,
gilded horses with glittering manes
life that bursts and wanes
endless cycles and fate—
fatiguing and familiar—

we carry the dust of stars
without their power,

we are hunters and hunted,
this paradox, ours.

Wild Hunt
—- they ride the skies searching for lost souls to take back

It was a wet Wednesday
early morning, when my love got lost
I stumbled onto the street, shiny
with shock, the walls fell, the road’s a sinkhole,
my legs, my arms, my voice
I swayed in the rain,
where was home, where was warm or dry?

I heard the hounds first, baying
the view-halloo
I saw them riding over the trees and treetops
circling, coming for me!
I was lost, for sure, I had nothing to say but,
“Can I go home?”
“Sure, what address?”

I rested
there was another dawn, another life, another
love.

—- they ride the skies searching for lost souls to take back

It was a wet Wednesday
early morning, when my love got lost
I stumbled onto the street, shiny
with shock, the walls fell, the road’s a sinkhole,
my legs, my arms, my voice
I swayed in the rain,
where was home, where was warm or dry?

I heard the hounds first, baying
the view-halloo
I saw them riding over the trees and treetops
circling, coming for me!
I was lost, for sure, I had nothing to say but,
“Can I go home?”
“Sure, what address?”

I rested
there was another dawn, another life, another
love.

-Dave Garbutt

You first heard the Wild Hunt in 1987

The belly of the clouds marked up
and you sleep with a ground edge—
silver and light
in the palm.

We keep telling each other nothing
is ruptured behind. That the pressure
is about holding a drastic answer
and not using it.

Thirty years of treading up
from the depths, ever closer
to midnight. Five minutes,
four. Now you wake at 11:58:20

stabbing at air. The sky quivers
its old bulge of haemorrhage. Thin
skin, music of blood beating;
hunting horns needling through,

tick-tick tumbrel, and you
still waiting
for the gout of light
that means a skin is done.

-Ankh Spice – 14/10/22

*F WORD WARNING*

THE WILD HUNT (F 2.14. The Wild Hunt La_caza_salvaje_de_Odín,_por_Peter_Nicolai_Arbo.jpg)

Cruise missiles are striking all over Ukraine,
leveling homes and grids in an art
far short of what Furies scream with heart.
That roaring you hear: You might gloze it
a Teuton’s late-modern wind had cordite
loftier sear with the dead. It’s autumn,
you see, the leaves in Kyiv falling golden red,
mistier and more fragrant than yesterday’s
miasmal blast plumes. Pooty ol’ Putin
should have been better read; Wild Hunts
soar higher than any Muskovite runes.
Save rapine for Yule’s cod of a freeze
when corpses stay bent and worship whole,
flowering where they fell in scarlet diastole.
By then, half of his army will be strewn
where singular ambition played neck
with Azovstav steel, bleeding out in ice
balloons burbling Mama, Oh Fuck & Can’t Feel.
Then we may hear the pure fury of the Hunt,
Odin blowing his wut-trumpet astride
the blastwork of prehistory’s gale,
wolfhounds braying, black eagles
screaming, prying loose the stale fingers
of ambition and upyank in skyward noose.
The Hunt rouses Syrians from their sand graves,
joined by locals heaped in Babi Yar and Bucha
& the three virgins their Devil fucked too much.
Night upon night heaps on every vale
a thundering herd of merciless waves
drowning Christmastide with stiffs past pale.
They’ll show the Russian boys a real Holocaust—
a sky’s troop to Valhalla on breaths of pure frost.
A Wild Hunt indeed, as far as roaring may go
auguring victory for The Horned One’s silver beau,
the queen who plumps her bed with reddening snow.

-David Cohea

Bios and Links

-David Cohea

is a retired newspaperman who lives in Central Florida USA. He publishes poetry on his blog Oran’s Well (blueoran.wordpress.com) under the screen name of Brendan. He also runs earthweal.com, an online forum for eco-poets. His self-published collections include The God in the Tree, Letters to a Dead Shaman and The Beached Wings of Heaven.

-Jane Dougherty

lives and works in southwest France. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her poems and stories have been published in magazines and journals including Ogham Stone, the Ekphrastic Review, Black Bough Poetry, ink sweat and tears, Gleam, Nightingale & Sparrow, Green Ink and Brilliant Flash Fiction. She blogs at https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/ Her poetry chapbooks, thicker than water and birds and other feathers were published in October and November 2020.

-Eryn McConnell

is a poet originally from the UK who now lives in South Germany with their family. They have been writing poetry since their teens and is currently working on their second collection of poems.

-Spriha Kant

developed an interest in reading and writing poetries at a very tender age. Her poetry “The Seashell” was first published online in the “Imaginary Land Stories” on August 8, 2020, by Sunmeet Singh. She has been a part of Stuart Matthew’s anthology “Sing, Do the birds of Spring” in the fourth series of books from #InstantEternal poetry prompts. She has been featured in the Bob Dylan-inspired anthology “Hard Rain Poetry: Forever Dylan” by the founder and editor of the website “Fevers of the Mind Poetry and Art” David L O’ Nan. Her poetries have been published in the anthology “Bare Bones Writing Issue 1: Fevers of the Mind”. Paul Brookes has featured her poetry, “A Monstrous Shadow”, based on a photograph clicked by herself, as the “Seventh Synergy” in “SYNERGY: CALLING ALL WRITERS WHO ARE PHOTOGRAPHERS” on his blog “The Wombwell Rainbow”. She has been featured in the “Quick-9 interview” on feversofthemind.com by David L’O Nan. She has reviewed the poetry book “Silence From The Shadows” by Stuart Matthews. Her acrostic poetry “A Rainstorm” has been published in the Poetic Form Challenge on the blog “TheWombwell Rainbow” owned by Paul Brookes. She also joined the movement “World Suicide Prevention Day” by contributing her poetry “Giving Up The Smooch” on the blog “The Wombwell Rainbow”, an initiative taken by Paul Brookes.

-Gaynor Kane

from Belfast in Northern Ireland, had no idea that when she started a degree with the OU at forty it would be life changing.  It magically turned her into a writer and now she has a few collections of poetry published, all by The Hedgehog Poetry Press Recently, she has been a judge for The North Carolina Poetry Society and guest sub-editor for the inaugural issue of The Storms: A journal of prose, poetry and visual art. Her new chapbook, Eight Types of Love, was released in July. Follow her on Twitter @gaynorkane or read more at www.gaynorkane.com

-Dave Garbutt

has been writing poems since he was 17 and has still not learned to give up. His poems have been published in The Brown Envelope Anthology, and magazines (Horizon, Writers & Readers) most recently on XRcreative and forthcoming in the Deronda review. His poem ‘ripped’ was long listed in the Rialto Nature & Place competition 2021. In August 2021 he took part in the Postcard Poetry Festival and the chap book that came from that is available at the postcard festival website. https://ppf.cascadiapoeticslab.org/2021/11/08/dave-garbutt-interview/.

He was born less than a mile from where Keats lived in N London and sometimes describes himself as ‘a failed biologist, like Keats’, in the 70’s he moved to Reading until till moving to Switzerland (in 1994), where he still lives. He has found the time since the pandemic very productive as many workshops and groups opened up to non-locals as they moved to Zoom. 

Dave retired from the science and IT world in 2016 and he is active on Twitter, FaceBook, Medium.com, Flickr (he had a solo exhibition of his photographs in March 2017). He leads monthly bird walks around the Birs river in NW Switzerland. His tag is @DavGar51.

-Merril D. Smith

lives in southern New Jersey near the Delaware River. Her poetry has been published in several poetry journals and anthologies, including Black Bough Poetry, Anti-Heroin Chic,  Fevers of the Mind, and Nightingale and Sparrow. Her first full-length poetry collection, River Ghosts, is forthcoming from Nightingale & Sparrow Press.  Twitter: @merril_mds  Instagram: mdsmithnj  Website/blog: merrildsmith.com

-Jacqueline Dempsey-Cohen,

a retired teacher and children’s library specialist, considers herself an adventurer. She has meandered the country in an old Chevy van and flown along on midnight runs in a smoky old Convair 440 to deliver the Wall Street Journal. She is a licensed pilot, coffee house lingerer, and finds her inspiration and solace in nature in all its glorious diversity. Loving wife and mother, she makes her home in the wilds of Portland OR. www.MudAndInkPoetry.art 

-Kyla Houbolt’s

first two chapbooks, Dawn’s Fool (Ice Floe Press) and Tuned (CCCP Chapbooks), were published in 2020. Tuned is also available as an ebook. Her work has appeared in Hobart, Had, Barren, Juke Joint, Moist, Trouvaille Review, and elsewhere. Find her work at her linktree: https://linktr.ee/luaz_poet. She is on Twitter @luaz_poet.