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Nat Jul 2021
Across the street and just below the lilac sky
Catch ashy grey roof tiles that evade the eye
A portal of lamplight, amber and glass
Familiar strangers, imagined pasts

Memories that weren't
Things you don't know
Doors that are locked
A place you can't go
Robert C Howard Feb 2019
Morning Rainbow

Myriad prismatic crystals,
     refract the morning sun-streams -
painting layers of spectral arches
     across the misted horizon.

Eyes turned to the western skies,
     we suspend our meteorological selves  
acquiescing to miracles unveiled before us -
     un-beckoned and scarcely earned,
proffering thanks for the radiant epistle
     of healing, hope and promise,
artfully encoded in transfigured light.

Synthetic Refractions

A luminary ballet takes center stage
    when synthetic refractors come to play:
crystal pendants bathe our foyers
      with dazzling swaths of color.
Hazy coronas encircle streetlamps
      discovered by headlights through the fog.
A science class prism slices light rays
     into pre-ordered spectral strata.

If the sky denies us a rainbow,
     we can always fashion one of our own
and we do!



Spectral Sound

Before there was music,
     bird songs brushed our souls
and the murmur of woodland streams
     held us captive by their banks.

Soon we learned to sing and tint the air
    With prisms of wood and wire and metal
and to color soundscapes in our spirits
     With songs of wonder, joy and longing.

Before there was music,
     bird songs brushed our souls.

Robert Charles Howard, 2019
This is a rewrite and expansion of a prior poem called Morning Rainbow. The poems are design to go with an original piece for solo flute also called Prisms.
nja Feb 2019
The mirror is a farce, a myth, a crook
Look.
Really!
Our reflection is always exposed to our imaginative
creations,
concoctions,
and corrosions.
There is power in a refraction.
See whatever you want coz wer all blind anyway.
We never see the truth in the mirror
Mark Rohlf Jan 2019
red green blue
converge to white
reveal what's true
ever of spite

yellow red blue
diverge from white
expressed in color
received in grey
or the other way

yellow red blue
converge to black
yellow cyan magenta
follow suit

reflection refraction
doppler shift

wave and photon
linger the grift
Poetic T Jul 2018
We are all thoughts that aren't
                              as tuned as others.
But even though we see through
                              different lenses
some lessons can be learnt
        from the refraction of others view.
Tina McKenzie Apr 2015
After denying myself for so long
How can you accept me
Staring into my eyes
Seeing pieces of broken glass
Mirroring shattered dreams
Reflecting old lovers past
Yet somehow
You always come back
With a new smile
dafne Jul 2014
He saw himself in her eyes suspended in two shining drops of bright water, everything was there as if her eyes were two miraculous bit of violet amber that might capture and hold him in tact.
Her face, fragile milk crystal with a soft constant light in it. It was not the hysterical light of electricity, but the strangely comfortable and gently flattering light of a candle.

For how many people did you know who refracted you own light to you? People were often blazing away until they whiffed out.
How rarely did other people's faces take of you and throw back to you your own expression, your innermost trembling thought?
a small piece I took of Violet Amber, which is composed of bits and pieces of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451

— The End —