"boughs" poems
There is snow on the ground,
And the valleys are cold,
And a midnight profound
Blackly squats o'er the wold;
But a light on the hilltops half-seen hints of feastings un-hallowed and old.
There is death in the clouds,
There is fear in the night,
For the dead in their shrouds
Hail the sin's turning flight.
And chant wild in the woods as they dance round a Yule- altar fungous and white.
To no gale of Earth's kind
Sways the forest of oak,
Where the sick boughs entwined
By mad mistletoes choke,
For these pow'rs are the pow'rs of the dark, from the graves of the lost Druid-folk.
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From where I lingered in a lull in march
outside the sugar-house one night for choice,
I called the fireman with a careful voice
And bade him leave the pan and stoke the arch:
‘O fireman, give the fire another stoke,
And send more sparks up chimney with the smoke.’
I thought a few might tangle, as they did,
Among bare maple boughs, and in the rare
Hill atmosphere not cease to glow,
And so be added to the moon up there.
The moon, though slight, was moon enough to show
On every tree a bucket with a lid,
And on black ground a bear-skin rug of snow.
The sparks made no attempt to be the moon.
They were content to figure in the trees
As Leo, Orion, and the Pleiades.
And that was what the boughs were full of soon.
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'Tis moonlight, summer moonlight,
All soft and still and fair;
The solemn hour of midnight
Breathes sweet thoughts everywhere,
But most where trees are sending
Their breezy boughs on high,
Or stooping low are lending
A shelter from the sky.
And there in those wild bowers
A lovely form is laid;
Green grass and dew-steeped flowers
Wave gently round her head.
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The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.
Deserted like the dwarves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!
Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.
In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.
You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!
It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.
Pilot's dread, fury of blind driver,
turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!
In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!
You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!
I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.
Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.
Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness.
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.
There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.
There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle.
Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!
How terrible and brief my desire was to you!
How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.
Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,
still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.
Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.
Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.
And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.
This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!
Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,
what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!
From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.
You still flowered in songs, you still brike the currents.
Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.
Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,
lost discoverer, in you everything sank!
It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
which the night fastens to all the timetables.
The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.
Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.
Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands.
Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.
It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one!
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How I love to sit
beneath you
and let your
gentle, slender branches
surround and protect me.
Like a loving touch,
your beautiful green boughs
reach out to reassure me,
I am not alone.
Apr 28, 2014
Apr 28, 2014 at 11:04 AM UTC
*Supreme Love,
Through a land of barren fields, leads to a nourishing tree, that rhythms in the wind like a heart of bleeding green.
There, you will find me, prostrating in its lingering boughs, gazing into your sky with smiles of Eros.
A nightgown of innocence awaits you in the lotus, falling amongst the constellations of my parallel.*
©Copyright 2007 Written and Edited by Racquel Davis
Jul 31, 2014
Jul 31, 2014 at 1:49 PM UTC
So now the changed year’s turning wheel returns
And as a girl sails balanced in the wind,
And now before and now again behind
Stoops as it swoops, with cheek that laughs and burns,—
So Spring comes merry towards me now, but earns
No answering smile from me, whose life is twin’d
With the dead boughs that winter still must bind,
And whom to-day the Spring no more concerns.
Behold, this crocus is a withering flame;
This snowdrop, snow; this apple-blossom’s part
To breed the fruit that breeds the serpent’s art.
Nay, for these Spring-flowers, turn thy face from them,
Nor gaze till on the year’s last lily-stem
The white cup shrivels round the golden heart.
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Through an open window, I hear
the Big Thompson's steady music
drifting up from the valley below.
May breezes and gentle rains
coax the snow-capped peaks
to surrender their alabaster cloaks
downslope into gathering streams.
Silhouetted by light from the waxing moon,
a cinnamon bear lopes along water’s edge,
pauses for a draught and meanders on.
A bull elk newly coifed with velvet antlers
folds his legs beneath its belly
and kneels into grasses beside a tranquil pond.
while the Big Thompson rushes on.
Spring beauties, calypso orchids and geraniums
shake off their winter's sleep and
dot every vagabond trail and verdant hill
while fresh new leaves adorn the aspen boughs.
The Big Thompson inexorably presses on
bound for rendezvous with time and space
and tumbles into the always patient sea.
© 2017 by Robert Charles Howard
May 28, 2017
May 28, 2017 at 8:57 AM UTC
Whilst looking far o'r
long time spreading moor
Cloaked in daisies white
There shall likely be
Bloss'ming cherry tree
Grasping at your sight
Brushing silently by
As daisies qui'tly sigh
As wind moves in flight
Long time you sought
And hard you fought
Not reaching low boughs height
Till setting down
For sun is drowned
Settled for the night
Just before you drift away
Something beckons you to stay
A calling in the night
Yellow and white flow'r
Both of no great pow'r
Standing to no great height
Forbidden by blistering sun
They Bloom when day is done
Sending petal into flight
Finally draws your eye
From boughs never nye
Form'ly insignif'gant beauty in sight
First blooms Flow'r of moon
Eve'ning Primrose thereafter soon
The second of yellow the first of white
Mar 18, 2015
Mar 18, 2015 at 10:08 PM UTC
***If I were a Rainbow
The children would run to me
Turning upside down, I would be an iridescent swing,
The children would mount my rainbow wing
Swaying high up in the starry skies ascending on the moon
The children do bunny jumps, counting stars till noon
Awestruck and desirous they pick a few
The colours pink purple orange magenta and blue
Swaying down to the flower garden
They would pick flowers from the boughs laden
Threading in a star and a flower into an ornamental garland
Adorned as neckpieces , running around ,making one happy land
If I were a Rainbow
I would dismember all the semicircles making one hula hoop
The children would gleefully twirl and sway into the enormous loop
If I were a Rainbow
I would become one big ramp
The children would joyously roller skate up and down
Lighting up the ramp
If I were a Rainbow
And all of these came true
I would turn upside down making one radiant smile across the sky
The children would happily smile back at me , waving me good bye***
Aug 25, 2017
Aug 25, 2017 at 11:49 PM UTC
At night, by the fire,
The colors of the bushes
And of the fallen leaves,
Repeating themselves,
Turned in the room,
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks
Came striding.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.
The colors of their tails
Were like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
In the twilight wind.
They swept over the room,
Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks
Down to the ground.
I heard them cry--the peacocks.
Was it a cry against the twilight
Or against the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
Turning as the flames
Turned in the fire,
Turning as the tails of the peacocks
Turned in the loud fire,
Loud as the hemlocks
Full of the cry of the peacocks?
Or was it a cry against the hemlocks?
Out of the window,
I saw how the planets gathered
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
I saw how the night came,
Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks
I felt afraid.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.
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How this **** fable instructs
And mocks! Here's the parody of that moral mousetrap
Set in the proverbs stitched on samplers
Approving chased girls who get them to a tree
And put on bark's nun-black
Habit which deflects
All amorous arrows. For to sheathe the ****** shape
In a scabbard of wood baffles pursuers,
Whether goat-thighed or god-haloed. Ever since that first Daphne
Switched her incomparable back
For a bay-tree hide, respect's
Twined to her hard limbs like ivy: the puritan lip
Cries: 'Celebrate Syrinx whose demurs
Won her the frog-colored skin, pale pith and watery
Bed of a reed. Look:
Pine-needle armor protects
Pitys from Pan's assault! And though age drop
Their leafy crowns, their fame soars,
Eclipsing Eva, Cleo and Helen of Troy:
For which of those would speak
For a fashion that constricts
White bodies in a wooden girdle, root to top
Unfaced, unformed, the nipple-flowers
Shrouded to suckle darkness? Only they
Who keep cool and holy make
A sanctum to attract
Green virgins, consecrating limb and lip
To chastity's service: like prophets, like preachers,
They descant on the serene and seraphic beauty
Of virgins for virginity's sake.'
Be certain some such pact's
Been struck to keep all glory in the grip
Of ugly spinsters and barren sirs
As you etch on the inner window of your eye
This ****** on her rack:
She, ripe and unplucked, 's
Lain splayed too long in the tortuous boughs: overripe
Now, dour-faced, her fingers
Stiff as twigs, her body woodenly
Askew, she'll ache and wake
Though doomsday bud. Neglect's
Given her lips that lemon-tasting droop:
Untongued, all beauty's bright juice sours.
Tree-twist will ape this gross anatomy
Till irony's bough break.
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Are you fleeing from Love because of a single humiliation?
What do you know of Love except the name?
Love has a hundred forms of pride and disdain,
and is gained by a hundred means of persuasion.
Since Love is loyal, it purchases one who is loyal:
it has no interest in a disloyal companion.
The human being resembles a tree; its root is a covenant with God:
that root must be cherished with all one's might.
A weak covenant is a rotten root, without grace or fruit.
Though the boughs and leaves of the date palm are green,
greenness brings no benefit if the root is corrupt.
If a branch is without green leaves, yet has a good root,
a hundred leaves will put forth their hands in the end.
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Does that lamp still burn in my Father's house,
Which he kindled the night I went away?
I turned once beneath the cedar boughs,
And marked it gleam with a golden ray;
Did he think to light me home some day?
Hungry here with the crunching swine,
Hungry harvest have I to reap;
In a dream I count my Father's kine,
I hear the tinkling bells of his sheep,
I watch his lambs that browse and leap.
There is plenty of bread at home,
His servants have bread enough and to spare;
The purple wine-fat froths with foam,
Oil and spices make sweet the air,
While I perish hungry and bare.
Rich and blessed those servants, rather
Than I who see not my Father's face!
I will arise and go to my Father:--
"Fallen from sonship, beggared of grace,
Grant me. Father, a servant's place."
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There is snow on the ground,
And the valleys are cold,
And a midnight profound
Blackly squats o'er the wold;
But a light on the hilltops half-seen hints of
feastings unhallowed and old.
There is death in the clouds,
There is fear in the night,
For the dead in their shrouds
Hail the sun's turning flight.
And chant wild in the woods as they dance
round a Yule-altar fungous and white.
To no gale of Earth's kind
Sways the forest of oak,
Where the thick boughs entwined
By mad mistletoes choke,
For these pow'rs are the pow'rs of the dark,
from the graves of the lost Druid-folk.
And mayst thou to such deeds
Be an abbot and priest,
Singing cannibal greeds
At each devil-wrought feast,
And to all the incredulous world
shewing dimly the sign of the beast.
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bathed in the cool light of the moon,
my sweet puppyhead and me,
sit.
under the full soft light,
her ray’s illuminating the yard,
the woods.
footsteps crunch drying leaves,
fox, deer or foe?
waning canopy,
boughs lighter each day.
fall, majestic, peaceful
dying for another year.
plants and creatures,
taking refuge in the deep dark void
of mother earth,
of mother nature.
squirreling away tidbits for a late winter snack,
coats blooming, thickening.
such delight,
each night,
sitting outside,
my puppyhead and me.
quiet and solitary,
no humans
annoying me.
silent and still
only nocturnal creatures
meandering about.
what magic,
what sacredness.
what mystical delight.
never apart,
only the ONE.
such silly confusion,
thinking a person,
separate and small,
quaking with fear.
the big deep dark mystery
laughing and jovial,
always here,
here for us all.
open your eyes,
feel your nature,
always here,
never apart.
fearing death
fearing life,
what a silly way to live this
life!
the moment you were born,
you began dying,
what a relief,
knowing the score!
relaxing into the madness,
laughing at it all,
pure and free,
forever more,
and not……
being,
not being,
eons of reflection,
sages and rishis
revealing the truth,
it can’t be done for you,
only you can become
that which you are….
that which you always were.
my sweet love, my sweet life,
my puppyhead and me,
sitting here in Fall.
~~~
Sep 13, 2015
Sep 13, 2015 at 6:32 PM UTC
The bedroom walls don the shadows of the falling snowflakes
Through the window boughs swing heavy with crystals
Shimmering in the muted light of the crescented moon
Tracks of invisible animals impressed into that white
A wind whistling through empty corridors of an abandoned house
With a chandelier twisting in the ecstatic breeze
Flurries whipping frantically through that chilled air
Winter
Nov 6, 2013
Nov 6, 2013 at 11:23 PM UTC
She is young. Have I the right
Even to name her? Child,
It is not love I offer
Your quick limbs, your eyes;
Only the barren homage
Of an old man whom time
Crucifies. Take my hand
A moment in the dance,
Ignoring its sly pressure,
The dry rut of age,
And lead me under the boughs
Of innocence. Let me smell
My youth again in your hair.
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128
Bring me the sunset in a cup,
Reckon the morning’s flagons up
And say how many Dew,
Tell me how far the morning leaps—
Tell me what time the weaver sleeps
Who spun the breadth of blue!
Write me how many notes there be
In the new Robin’s ecstasy
Among astonished boughs—
How many trips the Tortoise makes—
How many cups the Bee partakes,
The Debauchee of Dews!
Also, who laid the Rainbow’s piers,
Also, who leads the docile spheres
By withes of supple blue?
Whose fingers string the stalactite—
Who counts the wampum of the night
To see that none is due?
Who built this little Alban House
And shut the windows down so close
My spirit cannot see?
Who’ll let me out some gala day
With implements to fly away,
Passing Pomposity?
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Wintry boughs against a wintry sky;
Yet the sky is partly blue
And the clouds are partly bright:--
Who can tell but sap is mounting high
Out of sight,
Ready to burst through?
Winter is the mother-nurse of Spring,
Lovely for her daughter's sake,
Not unlovely for her own :
For a future buds in everything;
Grown, or blown,
Or about to break.
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The shivering eyeglasses lazily coating the ground
Break way to the budding of the season.
To reincarnate is to live the anomaly,
The evergreen boughs bend in the wind.
Coalescing crystals form dew on our morn
To leave a fresh taste, on lips, on tongue.
The time is imminent, but the dawn is young,
My white Orchid, born to the sun.
Simply, optically, it's to weak to touch
Unworthy digits, to blind to see.
My scarlet levees, to right to feel.
The ivory blossom, to right to be real.
Under the canopies, the shimmering outline
Moves closer until the mirror cracks
And our reflections are polymorphicly one,
Our hearts still polyamorously two.
I yearn to dream of lucid lavender,
The aroma surrounds the dream, still dreamed
The scent so real, or so it seemed
Encapsulating this moment in amber.
Until we sleep, until we fly
Together. Our wings open to embrace the quilted high.
Our mouths embrace to fill the void,
Unleash the magic, bathing us in light
Bricks and mortar overlap my thoughts
But time alone is not a wall.
Time alone, it cannot fall
And it still ticks with the beat of my pendulum.
Oh flower, oh life, vitality aplenty.
Your hideousness, a secret untold,
Withers to your beauty, yet to unmold.
Le voyage fantasme is here for me now.
And now the grains slip between my toes.
The sandcastles caress the glass of our hour.
It's never too late, but always on time,
So before the light fades, kiss me and say
"I'll sleep tonight,
I'll dream of you."
Orchid, my Orchid, love, my love
I'll dream with you forever.
Nov 3, 2010
Nov 3, 2010 at 7:39 PM UTC
Forlorn as a destitute child,
I wandered to the distant wild;
Through a peculiar lonelier wood,
Like a wave, roving as fast as I could.
Not long, I came by a myrtle river bank
Where early boughs grow wild and rank.
There my eyes kissed upon wild flowers,
All grandly dressed in neon colours,
Rhythmically whispering lullabies,
Ineffably upon velvety indigo skies,
Whilst swaying in a friskier dance,
That could render naked eyes in a trance.
At such a mesmerizing sight,
I drowned in a pool of sweet delight
Hence in wonderment shook my head,
And in a velvety voice whispered:
"Flowers, flowers, flowers, flowers
What brings about thy Ineffable colors?"
**And all flowers smiled and smiled,
And exuberantly all thus replied:**
"At dusk, when fair maidens of the night
Grandly dress in flocks, of burning bright;
And madly smiles about skies above,
Oh! Their opalscent eyes we flowers love:
So, from their pulchritudenous color;
So lies the mysteries of our allure."
At such a mesmerizing reply,
Sweet delight oozed from mine eye
Hence in wonderment shook my head,
And in a velvety voice whispered:
"Flowers, flowers, flowers, flowers
What brings about thy ineffable colors?"
**And all flowers smiled and smiled,
And exuberantly all thus replied:**
"At dawn, when the day's watchman
Doth weareth his novelty crown,
And treads upon yonder skies above,
Oh! His golden crown we flowers love:
So, from his pulchritudenous color;
So lies the mysteries of our allure."
At such a mesmerizing reply,
Sweet delight oozed from mine eye
Hence in wonderment shook my head,
And in a velvety voice whispered:
"Flowers, flowers, flowers, flowers
What brings about thy ineffable colors?"
**And all flowers smiled and smiled,
And exuberantly all thus replied:**
"When envious veils of dusk engulfs day,
Paving the fairest Empress way;
To grandly grace on yonder skies above,
Oh! Her rainbow robes we flowers love:
So, from her pulchritudenous colour;
So lies the mysteries of our allure."
At such a mesmerizing reply,
Sweet delight oozed from mine eye
Hence in wonderment shook my head,
And in a velvety voice whispered:
"Flowers, flowers, flowers, flowers
What brings about thy ineffable colors?"
**'And all,' all flowers smiled and smiled;
I mean, smiled, smiled and smiled,
I say, smiled, smiled and smiled,
And happiness bloomed in the wild.**
#bliss of solitude
©Kikodinho Edward Alexandros
Jumeira, Dubai
6th August 2017
Aug 6, 2017
Aug 6, 2017 at 10:09 AM UTC
The blazing eye of Dawn is all to fools:
those who see the joy
in Light expressed as Light,
but brightness also graces Night.
Her veil parted, the black curtain
giving way to shades of blue and gold,
Her rapturous embrace inspiring eyes beholden.
*Planted in Her garden, neighboring eaves
rustling in their trembling eagerness to share their leaves!*
For in Her realm eternal, flawless
clay of earth and blade of grass
stretch forth to feel the loving light
of their supernal Goddess!
Her joy ran rampant through my boughs,
my swaying branches spreading wide
to grasp the rays of her horizon --
*With love untainted as a child's, so boundless
as my selfless roots cried out to sing her praises soundless!*
No dalliance ever felt before complete
until this blessed revelation -
this, Her holy emanation, warmed my heart,
annulled my restless reason:
She was every mother: deepest love
in understanding all that came of Her,
enclosing us within the circular.
*She beckoned but a moment by Her brilliance; best,
lest I uprooted trunk and earth to shade Her manifest.*
Aug 4, 2011
Aug 4, 2011 at 5:14 PM UTC
It's deep night, damp and sticky with the
residue of southern heat which refuses to
totally dissipate this far into the night.
The night is thick with the voices of insects
and sleepers sweating atop their sheets,
committing sins in their vivid imaginings.
Dreaming, I'm standing by the wide river
wishing I could fly with the breeze through
the trees, the soft, warm, cradling breeze
that comes up from the Mississippi River.
It stirs the boughs of cypress and oak trees
and arouses a wind chime's music somewhere
down the dimly-lit street, while scattering
a newspaper like huge leaves; a wind that smells
of magnolia and dogwood blossoms and
river mud. A full moon casts long shadows
which melt into even darker, yet benign
shadows. The night has compiled its secrets,
mysteries, transgressions; surely that is the
charm of night - it frees the mind to settle not
on what seemed important during the day,
but on the longings kept locked away, hidden
from the disclosing light, struggling to break
free and take wing with this night wind.
--
Sep 14, 2011
Sep 14, 2011 at 1:34 PM UTC
Lying beneath trees in the heat of the day cannot possibly be compared to any other pastime: to watch the light toy with the leaves, shining bright and brighter in the ever-changing gaps in the leaves turned dark by the shadow. The interplay between the light and the leaves in ever-ongoing banter and they hate to quit their game when the sun moves too far beneath the horizon for the light to reach above the boughs and must return to its source. The wind plays a part in the sport as well, when it rustles the leaves and causes a sparkle in the variance of illumination. Tortoiseshell patterns scatter along your limbs and features and tumble off the cliffs of your sides into the grass you recline on. The filter of light casts playful interlocking patterns of light and dark impossible to decode without the proper encryption, forever lasting while the world speeds past their lazy game.
Mar 14, 2014
Mar 14, 2014 at 11:39 PM UTC