This is for Paul Brookes’ December challenge.

Turning on the light

On the pond, boatmen skim,
insect skiffs, leaves dry-curled,
red on green water,
and the dimples are silver.

In the sky, clouds lower,
ragged laundry, waiting
to be rain-washed
and hung to dry.

A wind gusts,
ruffling tree heads,
pushing though the billows,

and through the rent
in the sodden cloud-fabric,
suddenly, the sun—

light falls through the trees
onto still water, red leaves,
skimming insects,
and the dimples turn to gold.

For Paul Brookes’ December challenge.

Owl light and rainbow songs

Light brushes
sky and water colours
chalk and oil hues
the colour of the hidden belly of shells
cloud-smudged charcoal
the luminous neon
of storm cloud sunbursts
garlanded with rainbows

and dark night tidies
all the glitter away
with owl-feather plumes
sweeping stars bright-clean
and the soft songs of silence.

A short piece for Paul Brookes’ December challenge.

Patron saints and magpies

Her mantlepiece was a gallery of saints, each one with a specific job to do. There were statuettes of various sightings of the Virgin Mary, and a sheaf of Mass cards ready to be consulted and invoked with the prayer written on the back.
Her favourite idolatrous image was Saint Martin de Porres, in the form of a statue I was convinced was Cy Grant in Dominican robes. She loved Martin because he loved animals, and he had a position of prestige on top of the cabinet in the front room from where he could beam over at the Infant of Prague in his glass case above the gas fire.
Saint Martin was brought out mainly to bless eyesight, in particular my youngest sister’s. She had perfectly good eyesight when Saint Martin was ministering to it, but later…

Here is today’s poem for Paul Brookes’ December challenge

Eels

Elegance of streamlining,
elongated, electric sometimes,
eels slip from Sargasso
to Severn and Seine,
sleek and serpentine,
silver-green,
keeping to dim shallow-shadows,
ever moving on and back,
birth to death
and the long voyage in-between.

Transparent infant cleaners
of marine snowdrifts,
then silver-sleek and tubular,
they hunt the teeming mud
and sand for bottom-dwellers,
upriver and down,
drawn ineluctably back
to Sargasso weed
and the calm of tideless,
tidy waters.