"dapple" poems
#*Nightbird perches high
beneath the shooting stars
that dapple the bouquet
of sleepless peace
... his soft downy breast
has lent breath
to the sweet April afterglow
heaving with song
The mystical feathered troubadour's
swooning echo
A melodic twilight serenade
conjures a moonstruck metamorphosis,
sprouting magical wings of flight;*
rousing *a lonely heart's esprit
to fly away unfettered
in constellations of song
How dare imaginings spilled from the big dipper
enchant such an enrapturing magic spell?
It's so far to fall from swinging on a star!
It's so far beyond nearing crescent moon
when you wish upon a star
Thereupon struck by a bewitching bolt of starlight;
Dropping asudden as a shooting-star!
Rolling like trailing thunder;
tucked and tumbling ―
somersaulting,
celestial rumbling
blossoming with an unearthly joy
A nascent winged heart splayed bare,
soars upon cresting wind waves;
dreaming of that shapeless
w h o o o o s h ―
gathering beneath
~ uplifting wings ~
Suddenly ― gliding freely,
winging gracefully
upon wafting star drift glitter;
lilting lightly upon the arising cadence
of nightingale's melodious fluted song
Nightingale sings sweet April perfume
beneath the star shed lamplight twinkle
... and it makes no difference if it's only a dream
if my heart had wings*
imagined by: Jesse Stillwater
Apr 27, 2018
Apr 27, 2018 at 11:26 AM UTC
So much have I forgotten in ten years,
So much in ten brief years! I have forgot
What time the purple apples come to juice,
And what month brings the shy forget-me-not.
I have forgot the special, startling season
Of the pimento's flowering and fruiting;
What time of year the ground doves brown the fields
And fill the noonday with their curious fluting.
I have forgotten much, but still remember
The poinsettia's red, blood-red in warm December.
I still recall the honey-fever grass,
But cannot recollect the high days when
We rooted them out of the ping-wing path
To stop the mad bees in the rabbit pen.
I often try to think in what sweet month
The languid painted ladies used to dapple
The yellow by-road mazing from the main,
Sweet with the golden threads of the rose-apple.
I have forgotten--strange--but quite remember
The poinsettia's red, blood-red in warm December.
What weeks, what months, what time of the mild year
We cheated school to have our fling at tops?
What days our wine-thrilled bodies pulsed with joy
Feasting upon blackberries in the copse?
Oh some I know! I have embalmed the days,
Even the sacred moments when we played,
All innocent of passion, uncorrupt,
At noon and evening in the flame-heart's shade.
We were so happy, happy, I remember,
Beneath the poinsettia's red in warm December.
5k
The bright sun’s rays
Are dappled as they strike
The manicured greensward.
He, tall, lithe, teeth all aglow
In cream slacks and pastel blouson,
She, fair and fairylike in acres of shimmering gauze,
Alight from the auto
At the site of their ‘manger al fresco’
Let us call them Justin and Jocelyn.
The basket is heavy
No matter.
He lifts it clear to carry
She gasps, he grins.
In minutes the scene is set
The rug, the plates, the glasses
The pate, the cold chicken,
The fruit….the wine.
He deflowers a bottle of Moselle,
Wishing it were her.
Guessing as much she blushes.
Ants retreat to nests
Wasps attack alternate targets
Flies zoom elsewhere to feed.
And all the while the sun
The golden sun continues to dapple.
The rain is not quite horizontal
As Joe and Judy
Run from the bus stop
To the stony beach.
Not quite horizontal
But driven off the sea it tastes salty.
He, ordinary, average, in a dampening grey mackintosh.
She, hair bleached in a sister’s frock and jacket
Holding hands,
And hold each a sandwich
Cellophane wrapped.
Squatting against the seawall
They eat.
Wet eyes flash bright signals.
Joe has a small thermos
Its vegetable soup,
And somehow a hardboiled egg appears,
To share.
The rain continues its attack.
Jul 25, 2014
Jul 25, 2014 at 11:58 PM UTC
Perch on their water perch hung in the clear Bann River
Near the clay bank in alder dapple and waver,
Perch they called ‘grunts’, little flood-slubs, runty and ready,
I saw and I see in the river’s glorified body
That is passable through, but they’re bluntly holding the
pass,
Under the water-roof, over the bottom, adoze
On the current, against it, all muscle and slur
In the finland of perch, the fenland of alder, on air
That is water, on carpets of Bann stream, on hold
In the everything flows and steady go of the world.
4.4k
Turn your dapple gray diffuse light daydream
Towards the flashlight painted cloudscape I have made for you
And before the drafted owl coos I have collected in bottles and hung from this tree
For you
I have walked through fine winged butterflies and soft twilit moss
Over sun scorched sand and in the relief of white noise water
Which
Like the circle of your arms
Tucks my dark away in the bottom of some drawer
That we may find and laugh over through our old eyes wrinkled with years of delight
Our home is walking through a stream
Steps slowed in the thickness of water
Nov 8, 2012
Nov 8, 2012 at 11:24 PM UTC
An indifferent ache swirls in the silence
throbbing like a dancing candle flame;
no one understands the heart of silence
moving the darkness with its ancient dance
Its voice is only felt but never heard
the way it whispers the reality it bears;
disrobing the nakedness of a fragile heart
exposing inherent truth deep in disguise
retouching the chaos passing of love laid bare
Unspoken emotions that nobody hears
float around a muted tongue benumbed by fear
doubt is a bitter taste that knows not love
searching for a labyrinth to begin to wend a better way
trying to feel the unfelt warmth of love in an endless cold
waiting on a frozen emptiness that never thaws
No one understands the haunting fear,
... surly it couldn't happen again ― and surly it will,
a heart stifled silent, silence doth loudly peal
poignant dreaded words:
***"It's not you ― it's me ,.......
I love you but I'm not in love with you"***
and like winter dreaming for the sun to reappear,
to come back again and dry the memory of fallen tears,
a hushed heart falls off the earth lost in ether shadows lay
mooning in the lonely silence within moonlit dapple
When you pull love too close ― it will push you away
some silence heals ― a dissonant silence cuts to the bone
Only the lonely feel a silent voice sigh
Only one hears a silenced heart die ...
harlon rivers ... March 2018
Mar 22, 2018
Mar 22, 2018 at 3:00 PM UTC
Dapple-throned Aphrodite,
eternal daughterf God,
snare-knitter! Don't, I beg you,
cow my heart with grief! Come,
as once when you heard my far-
off cry and, listening, stepped
from your father's house to your
gold car, to yoke the pair whose
beautiful thick-feathered wings
oaring down mid-air from heaven
carried you to light swiftly
on dark earth; then, blissful one,
smiling your immortal smile
you asked, What ailed me now that
me me call you again? What
was it that my distracted
heart most wanted? "Whom has
Persuasion to bring round now
"to your love? Who, Sappho, is
unfair to you? For, let her
run, she will soon run after;
"if she won't accept gifts, she
will one day give them; and if
she won't love you -- she soon will
"love, although unwillingly..."
If ever -- come now! Relieve
this intolerable pain!
What my heart most hopes will
happen, make happen; you your-
self join forces on my side!
3.2k
Gold shed upon suckling gold,
The time of the bole blackens,
Of the dark mounted through dapple,
While in the sealed apple
The seed cradled toward cold.
A gold on gold spent,
Put by from an elm in its years
Now its gilded of days,
Over turf’s dishevelment;
Where all which is green sickens,
All the fresh shall be sere.
All which is green sickens,
And it is but for a time
Those embered veinings blaze
A year’s delirium;
Or neared of other space,
Unportioned azure shall close
One of more, and which is,
One which goes.
Let the little pupils that will,
Of vision, gaze for salt
To whet their gazing, wit
In one weather is high
From burrow and lair, by
Nether providences’ default
An all’s accrued.
And apposite, beyond
Such primer beholdings, has
Its long accounting known
The beetle’s morsel thus
Was rich, and the slug’s bed on
The oak’s generations, deep
Over the lark’s bones.
In slough of Edens fast
Wit in one weather shall stand,
While millennia nibble at
The sensual apple
Toppled it net,
Plenty in the palm of the hand,
And the fallen not fallen, not lost
From out its certitude—
For our unbeggaring
Has been gross. Few and late
To cherish an immoderate
Wish, hope’s calculus,
Love’s hope; few to miss,
From natural tally ******
In the lime-girdled space
Of choice, where alone
Man can abandon what
Is only his own;
And in cold and tarrying
Their rearisers sleep:
While to the granite cheek
Light’s purples bring
Infinite their ministering,
And past our finial
And ragged crests, to keep
Time’s ambient stood,
Propose horizons from
Their shadowy quarries; while,
In an unwandered wood,
Or under the indifferent foot,
Is let fall, let fall a fruit,
Through eternal leisures down,
For but time’s unravelling.
2.9k
I'd paint you in dreamscapes—
visions of rolling hills
and fields of autumn leaves,
your form draped in grass
and sunset dapple—
porcelain, delicate beauty,
a work of art, the way I see you
Feb 7, 2024
Feb 7, 2024 at 8:55 PM UTC
Hips hunkered, rise to dapple-blue-toned dusty seat
Flush arch cheeky blush, excitement
Droll eye-glazing blue pupil toned in sleepy drug haze
Wind whipping wild air rushing through tempered glass
Wubing whoosh of wheeled blacktop pavement
Colored in eerie sunshade yellow
Lined, darting-flash gold white boundary crossing
Tight knuckles, two hand hold
Blinking brown doe-eyed drowsy heavy lidded
Lolling head knocked back, head bash rested caressing faux blue
Ploom of dust
Dry-mouth open to catching fly’s
Or what’s left of dank-infused air
Quiet stillness
Blond hair crawling in busy wind,
Equally as gone
Thumping, jolting-momentum
White line boundary lost, wheels ended grass
Ditching down, dirt slid slide
Floating weightless suspended-nightmare phase
Snapping,
Awake! Awake!
Screaming slotted terrified,
Panic! Painful-heart-wrecking rob breath
Nose dive, mounded metal drive inching closer
Hairs-breath away
Afraid, screaming ****** ****** inside sealed lips
Brown eyes; lid white
Hands upon steering slack, loose light
Asleep, peaceful in calamity
Unnatural shake and tumble
Nail dug bleeding ache
Skidding gravel, tree lined doom
A god not believed in a prayer ensued
Shaking, the calm unglued
“Baby, wake I beg you!”
Brown quick electric wide
Screaming, Screaming
“Oh my God! Why!”
Swerve snake skin peelout
Black lane orange in night
An almost death.
Sep 21, 2012
Sep 21, 2012 at 4:08 PM UTC
reign on my charade, but risk the dapple
the first to kayak to mars. Jester, you say?
Messers Metro, Goldwyn and Meyer shan't have floundered
if you had taken the turtleneck, roughshod
Sep 13, 2010
Sep 13, 2010 at 6:04 PM UTC
reign on my charade, but risk the dapple
the first to kayak to mars. Jester, you say?
Messers Metro, Goldwyn and Meyer shan't have floundered
if you had taken the turtleneck, roughshod
Sep 13, 2010
Sep 13, 2010 at 6:04 PM UTC
Your fingers dapple the contours of my face,
like layers of a warm blanket
you peel back and
rest beneath my skin.
This sheer vulnerability.
I'm prejudiced to feel unguarded
and I'm afraid.
Not of you, but of love.
Of the things it would do to me.
Of the scars it will leave behind.
God, I'm trembling again...
Your kisses calm the waves
crashing against my skull.
I'm terrified
of love
and the autopsy it would do on me
once I'm lifeless after you've left me.
Still breathing but not alive.
I don't want to be a casualty of love again.
My stitched together brokenness will
surely break this time again under it's heavy toll.
But I'll do it again, for you and for me.
Because I love you. And Us.
I'll set aside the love for me, to love you more.
More than everything,
Because I love love.
May 11, 2016
May 11, 2016 at 10:43 AM UTC
*some rather dark nights
seems the moon's on vacation . . .*
1.
Look, here comes courage
Dragging the moon in its teeth
While stars dapple in its tangled fleece
Go on, you!
Go and put the moon back up in the sky
Where it belongs
2.
Tenebrous nite falls on square
Yet a caged moon shines courageous slivers
Most haunting melodies
Then that dark figure appears
Trying to steal it away
With black birds flapping round him
Like a sombre halo over him
He slinks off into the welcoming shadows.
3.
Girl with long blonde plaits
sits on water-lily petal-pads
In the middle of a mild mere
Mauve moon lies tame in her still palms
But the wrong notes suddenly play out
Harmony not quite jacked up
4.
Elemental whirlpool explodes
As sceptred figures hunch in red dust
A flash of green sky
white elephants drown in shallow puddles
angels sit on the edge of blue teacups
while thoughts crisscross
and moon hops away
galaxial order pleased
*put the moon back
where it belongs
let it hang there . . .
in the sky*
S T, 20 July 2013
Jul 20, 2013
Jul 20, 2013 at 4:11 AM UTC
Beech trees like cathedral pillars soar
To vaulted ceilings oozing dapple-green,
Where twinkling sunlight, filtering to the floor
Dilutes the dusky darkness in between.
A concert hall, acoustically tuned
To amplify each tremorous touch of stick
On wood, where silent magic is cocooned,
Responding to the scuffled tap and tick
From scrunching undergrowth, where dusty death
And dried decay seep back to nature’s store,
To resuscitate with pungent earthy breath
The spirit of the leafy forest floor.
Mar 21, 2011
Mar 21, 2011 at 3:14 AM UTC
Our moments collect in concentric rings about the nexus
Of a first embrace, adorned with Autumnal colors and scents -
We lovers blend, cupped gently below the stir of flecks and dapple.
Each leaf high up quivers in the bouquets and knows when to let go,
Fly and fall to earth.
Whispers from a rustling canopy climb down the bark encasements
Of these tall and somnolent trees, thirsty leaves that clatter and kiss,
Wink awake – brilliant – hold our gaze and suspend our hearts.
In a pirouette amidst the amity of recollection and premonition -
We shimmer in an iridescence of saffron on copper – remember this.
Moments light up, each one, for just an instant, the last of our lives;
Each conveniently the beginning of forever and forever smiles at us.
Rippling across the cycles of solstice and equinox, we radiate –
A nostalgic procession toward unmade memories, like tree rings.
We fly and fall in love.
Sep 21, 2014
Sep 21, 2014 at 9:04 PM UTC
The small rock representing your birth
engraved deep into a necklace
proving your worth
to the world
and to you
you,
the one sitting there
staring out into a moonlit sky
the thousands of twinkling stars
dapple the sky
as the whooshing wind whispers
belonging
You
the proud dark eyed girl
standing tall along an old wooded pier
the spray of the sea splatters your face with its salt
bellowing waves crash underneath your feet
shouting,
You belong
And You
are still here
one of many
on this earth
loved and guided
through this life and to the next
and you,
belong
Apr 28, 2017
Apr 28, 2017 at 11:14 AM UTC
daring nightmare treason dapple
creeping dark withering day chaff
starling; cast a frail song sharply
into redrimmed ears
telracs
dekcen
raor
!
sly mirroring the captivating decay
of this slain
day
May 21, 2010
May 21, 2010 at 2:26 PM UTC
in the rictus of an amethyst eve lays
the indomitable promise of cotton festering
under salient groves of hot fingers licking
the ridge of supple ******* in profusion dapple
crescent lips and sickle rivers running heavy
drunk limbic tickling breathes. so wet. the damp
ember carousing. in fragrant discord. all sensual
clamor violently. in verily know my limbs and every
atom of my dew
for i shall sprawl upon your effigy the clusters
of my heart
Aug 14, 2010
Aug 14, 2010 at 4:17 PM UTC
The days blend seamlessly into one another,
Like dusk til dawn exists
In the blink of some cosmic eye,
Dazed but not blinded
By the dapple pattern of the stars
Against the interstellar void.
The days fly endlessly by,
Like leaves being blown away
On some strange autumn wind,
Destined to go
Places where I’m not.
The days never end,
Until they do,
Like some starcraft distant
In both space and time,
Finding the edge of the universe
And falling over it.
Sep 4, 2016
Sep 4, 2016 at 9:44 AM UTC
I want it to be night.
I want it to be raining.
Sitting in the stale car, looking through the rain-glossed windows
The raindrops cut through the thin steam emanating from the headlights and dapple in the glow
The rain shivers through my jacket;
Sleeps against my skin
Add: the cold plastic steering wheel, cracked by time and use
Add: the dead air of the car, increasingly humid
Add: the faint sound of our breathing
Add: the quickly fogging glass
The roof is alive with the pummeling, dancing drops and their reflection from the grim black steel and the memories of summer still living in the peeling paint and the time that we sat on your car and dented it but we told your mom it was a falling branch
These memories die into a regular, irregular cut-time autumn jig
I try to sync, but only sink.
You've found the key.
The car starts and we drown in the din.
Sep 19, 2012
Sep 19, 2012 at 11:00 PM UTC
Dreams lost,
like golden fields
of youth.
Hay bales dapple
my mind;
if only that
appaloosa could
nibble me now.
Dandelions and clover
for the
pretend wife,
a **** dog and
lots of lonely
acres for the
real boy.
Aug 10, 2021
Aug 10, 2021 at 12:21 AM UTC
we are not clean in the way that clouds pound lightning down on golf carts. we are circumspectral.
we soil by way of true love tossing cankers and spleen-balloons by strobe-light.
we have ginger eyes that scheme the tombs of our docile rictus
and the barbed lush of our offending reconcile.
we are not clean where the filth is excellent, but where the pollution is exquisitely the least meaning.
full of some Life in the Death.
my dearest, my darkest... yes we have no sphere without the cubicle and useless timepiece.
we have no light. save the dapple from a distant blur, upon the surface of a placid lake
of chill fire. a remote scope of reason on the fringe of a boundary
we had no faith in, but a religion to hate with.
we came from the sacred and bled
for the fake **** that drove us
Mazzy.
I'd Fade Into You.
and be some kind of real.
and you'd have to be.
May 17, 2013
May 17, 2013 at 3:03 AM UTC
.
returning to my childhood home in thought
returning to mallard quacks tolling
and the hour toiled
by ever thirsty church bells
cold damp rock house with ammonites
and belemnites coiling in the walls
and a cooling ichthyosaur
futilely trying to swim in the silty soil
struggling to catch prey
beneath the foundation
its darkness is rummage
.
a flush lawn planted nilly and obscene
monkshood mint cotton grass and ling
warm mentions an evening fire
and the family room
i'm mooding through the memory
and it grooms apart organic
birthing not river not smoke
rat sized earwigs take to the air heat
over the boiling tar garage roof
and i return home back through time
child swinging on thick vines suspended
by the yew over the stream
the willows dapple and paddle
the fir trees return
fierce sproutings of involving shade
ridding the house
of the intruder new extension
riding time back
and the caravan my parents
would later park on concrete
is swallowed
the storms of a bad year return the old wall
at the property edge
and the cottage reforms an ancient pace
with its surroundings
.
it's no longer my families claimed place
re-seemed with ghoulish history
the workhouse returns
and files with hard poverty
the wall punches through
in what will be the kitchen
and the cottage runs through long
with the neighbours space
dormitory takes the whole upstairs length
and the legend of the garment thief
drops ghost and rumour to live again
and then all this too flees out of history
.
rushing back through time
and this all sinks into the levels
swamp life takes over
and the ammonites
moisten with anticipation
prehistory is sprout to begin
.
Sep 23, 2025
Sep 23, 2025 at 10:08 AM UTC
I was dark and it was bright
the moon shades were at half tyne
and I wept
I felt confused but I carried on
through shedding dapple bright.
And it was very dim in the forest
of palms and swaying trees
but still I carried on
bravely as if he were still alive.
Jun 2, 2013
Jun 2, 2013 at 9:31 PM UTC