After the rainstorm
The skies' transparent jewels
Strung on spiderwebs
Sparkle and glint like diamonds
Upon an emerald field

Precipitant of an evening fog
To coalesce in drops of dew,
Upon green blades of crystal grass
Which mirror shards of love to you.
Shards of love in shades of grey
In opalescent light that falls,
As one with tears of misted rain
To soft caress thy hallowed halls.
M.

The mountain becomes microscopic
when the sun shines on a leaf
or the ripples of a shallow stream.
The leaf has the precise shadow
of a winter stem on its white tongue
and the ripples make the stones
look like little dwelling places.
The mossy one I kneel upon
is like a carpet of fresh ancient forest.
A wind rises from on high
ranges over ranges…
There is still so much
possibility.

The world grows many times over
as the eye sees more than its sight.

I make faces and fingers
out of the stones and branches
and my own face in the water
is feline, a primitive mask
I take off for shining water underneath.

I have plans for the moon
By night and by day
sometimes opening, sometimes closing
a seeing which does not depend on the eye
and an eye which does not merely see.
The moon gets behind me
and flows like a stream
inside a mountain
many dark miles unseen
before emerging as the source
of something pure that will heal me.

I have plans for the moon
like the sunflower nodding in the mind
shifts and keeps an eye
on father sun in the sky
resemblance does not depend on closeness
but the transfer of heat and invisible elements.
In the cool of the evening
a trail appearing through the dew
where an animal walks with a god
and man is missing from the middle.

I have plans for the moon
as the moon has plans for me.

In the moonlight, high in the Lemon Gum,
perched under the arching ghostly branches
two eyes of jet peer from a snow-white mask.
Tyto Alba, the Barn Owl, with heart shaped
****** disc, edged with ruff of stiff feathers.
Mottled pearl-grey body feathers above
the moth like plumage, purest white beneath
her slim legs are bare on the lower half,
with small feet that end with deadly talons.

Nocturnal, she roosts in the heat of day.
You will hear her screeching in the cold night
hear the scream before you ever see her.
She can see in the half light of humans
night vision even in total darkness
pinpoints her prey by listening to each sound
the desperate, scuttling little creatures make.

She is a well designed killing machine
with hooked beak, powerful feet and sharp claws.
Her flight feathers have softened edges
to make her deadly flight near soundless
She swoops silently down without warning
seizing victims with her claws, biting deep
into their neck arteries, puncturing
their most precious organs for a quick death.

Once, a nut brown boy
Neath an endless cobalt sky
Slid down smooth gray rocks
And tumbled to the beach
There, a logjam dragon woke

Wading through tide pools
Tiny ***** slip under rocks
Purple stars abound
The surface full of sparkles
A child's wonderland unbound

Sherbet morning sky
orange juice sun glare
squeezes out
a flavour spectrum
of gelato delight
a sky to slowly **** upon.

© M.L.Emmett

She comes each day
to comb the beach
for words beneath the waves.

Tongue crests roll curled
syllables to shore

The salt wind catches
breath and sighs

claws the chords
and clamour of the stones

reckless tide scratches
sentences of sand

splintering into time
particles and meaning

tidal drag snatches
back surface similes

slips back to blue
and thunders timpani

drifts back to reflected light
smooth land and water.

© M.L.Emmett

Sweet Butterfly, with wings now dry 'tis time to break away
and light upon the leaves of dawn while weeping willows sway,
not reminisce 'bout chrysalis discarded yesterday,
but treasure life, with colors rife in nature's cabaret.

Sweet Butterfly, you sometimes sigh "terrene so strange and new”,
but take a chance, with winged expanse of fairy-like bijou,
to taste delight in random flight, to drift beyond the blue
and then collect her naked nectar, sipped in morning dew.

Sweet Butterfly, you question why the breeze is seldom soft
when swirling you, your wings askew, while floating free aloft.
Some seem to find their peace of mind believing gods have coughed,
but others, downed, have often found more freedom when they've scoffed.

Sweet Butterfly, you needn't cry, the fields are full of clover,
and meadowlands bare braided strands that winds in waves flow over -
but if you fear that, more than here, another mead is mauver,
just flutter by, beneath the sky, unfettered flitting rover.

Sweet Butterfly, farewell, goodbye, you've left this world behind.
I oft gaze back along the track of flowers that you've mined
recalling days of light sashays and movements unconfined
that complement the firmament where beauty lies enshrined.

A clear icicle
Caught in the bright morning sun
Melting to teardrops

What’s in the mist?
What is so deep?
Madness? Maybe?
Strangeness? Samy.

The trees flee towards me
The mist rolls in
Their desperate swaying
Drowning displaying

The wind breaks in
Charge of the bright belayed
And the mist departs
The cloud free of hearts

Spreading dense night, dark robust forest,
growing relentless, virtually unstoppable;
it went on for some time after the sun surrendered
we were stranded in it's cloudy  thickets, thorny bushes.
Then came white butterflies, waves after waves after waves,
from the silver moon's abode  they descended so spectacularly.
          We were overwhelmed, by this sudden invasion of beauty,
that swayed my mind, made it fly high weightless like a feather,
couldn't even notice them eating up the fear of the forest altogether.