"overhung" poems
I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way,
Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring,
And gentle odours led my steps astray,
Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the ***** of the stream,
But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.
There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,
Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets;
Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets—
Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth—
Its mother’s face with Heaven’s collected tears,
When the low wind, its playmate’s voice, it hears.
And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,
Green cowbind and the moonlight-coloured may,
And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine
Was the bright dew, yet drained not by the day;
And wild roses, and ivy serpentine,
With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray;
And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold,
Fairer than any wakened eyes behold.
And nearer to the river’s trembling edge
There grew broad flag-flowers, purple pranked with white,
And starry river buds among the sedge,
And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,
Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge
With moonlight beams of their own watery light;
And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green
As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.
Methought that of these visionary flowers
I made a nosegay, bound in such a way
That the same hues, which in their natural bowers
Were mingled or opposed, the like array
Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours
Within my hand,—and then, elate and gay,
I hastened to the spot whence I had come,
That I might there present it!—Oh! to whom?
3.3k
Sara L Russell, 27th Oct 2015, 00:50am
I send you out into the world my dear ones.
Here is light and shade; and I see that it is good.
Here are the waters of life poured forth in shimmering splendour
all for your delight and to nurture your thirst;
behold, here is a paradise of sunlight scattering
diamonds of fire on the ocean,
sunlight filtering through the leaves of tall palms and little olive trees
in splinters of dappled emerald light and shade;
here are dazzling white sands and shady mangroves
it is all for you, for I love you, my children;
you belong to me
and to all of the earth.
I send you out, dear ones, amid the steamy jungles,
out to swim free in the dancing liquid light of rivers and streams,
I set you free in a garden of plenty.
Here are fountains and waterfalls overhung with intoxicating
swags of white jasmine and scarlet hibiscus
entwining with vines heavy with ripened grapes.
Flamingoes and bright parakeets fly out of the
greenery before you, in a flurry of rainbow fire.
Rejoice in this life I give you
and take care of this beautiful domain.
Keep it safe; make it last
and you in turn will last;
safe in an infinity of peace.
I send you out into the world my treasured ones,
free to walk naked, resplendent in the satin of your skin;
needing to conceal nothing from the sun's nurturing rays
or the eyes of beasts, or each other's loving gaze.
Behold, you are pure and untainted with shame;
you have the freedom of earth's bountiful beauty
and you are lovely as the flowers that carpet the forest floor.
Taste freely of the berries and the sweet delight of earth's nectar,
Let the pollen of the lotus bring you dreams of deep serenity.
Only touch not the fruit of the tree by the dark
fountain sealed. The Tree of Knowledge
is mine to know and yours only
to behold in silent wonder.
Mark this well, my children,
for it is my only rule.
Oct 26, 2015
Oct 26, 2015 at 9:07 PM UTC
Within a thick and spreading hawthorn bush
That overhung a molehill large and round,
I heard from morn to morn a merry thrush
Sing hymns to sunrise, and I drank the sound
With joy; and often, an intruding guest,
I watched her secret toil from day to day—
How true she warped the moss to form a nest,
And modelled it within with wood and clay;
And by and by, like heath-bells gilt with dew,
There lay her shining eggs, as bright as flowers,
Ink-spotted over shells of greeny blue;
And there I witnessed, in the sunny hours,
A brood of nature’s minstrels chirp and fly,
Glad as the sunshine and the laughing sky.
2.4k
Through tight slits in wooden slats
I catch the three-legged wind chime
Which hangs by a thread from
An overhung roof, by the gutter.
The owl - whom keeps watch,
Double sided, double gazing
At the goings on in the garden and
Mirrored happenings on the wall -
Sits quietly at the centre of his universe
With knotted thoughts so intertwined
For years he has neglected
Or perhaps forgotten how to
Play the jingle resting on the breeze.
The legs which dangle from the
Moon with noisy knees have
Lost their tone or dulled to make
Their silent stand against my wanting ears -
A fitting punishment.
The only steps to stifle my regret are
Toward the watching eyes to
Shake the clapper;
Summoning a tempest to end an age
Of silence from the much too long
Forsaken keeper of the chime.
Jun 27, 2015
Jun 27, 2015 at 5:03 PM UTC
O sweet illusions of song
That tempt me everywhere,
In the lonely fields, and the throng
Of the crowded thoroughfare!
I approach and ye vanish away,
I grasp you, and ye are gone;
But ever by night and by day,
The melody soundeth on.
As the weary traveller sees
In desert or prairie vast,
Blue lakes, overhung with trees
That a pleasant shadow cast;
Fair towns with turrets high,
And shining roofs of gold,
That vanish as he draws nigh,
Like mists together rolled —
So I wander and wander along,
And forever before me gleams
The shining city of song,
In the beautiful land of dreams.
But when I would enter the gate
Of that golden atmosphere,
It is gone, and I wonder and wait
For the vision to reappear.
1.6k
The alarming realm of the vertical,
so immence a hue – a blue
of such majesty that wonder
comes over all.
The magical universe of color –
linear filigrees of tone sheened
on unlikely surfaces : clandestine
rose and violet, a shout of crimson,
a whisper of pastel.
Sun-honeyed pine trees,
wind-silver rumpling of fields
falling into manes of lustre,
galleries of varying shades
fading into each other,
mirroring a marriage
of likenesses, mauve
through cerulean.
Tinted pavilions of firmament
overhung with luminescense
where mind is lost in the
amazement of impermance .
Dec 8, 2021
Dec 8, 2021 at 4:51 AM UTC
#9
In the garden hard with frost
sits an old man with furrowed eyes
staring at old decorations
dangling from branches
overhung with snow.
His forced breath sinks into fog.
He cannot feel
the rising of a warmer wind
or the furrowed ground
beneath his feet
poised to ooze life.
I am afraid of his eyes.
I turn away when he looks up
at the waves of geese returning,
thawing the ground with their shadows.
Jan 6, 2016
Jan 6, 2016 at 11:07 AM UTC
Two love sick birds high above
unconscious of the cold,
male cooing his words of love
female like a marigold.
Perched on a branch which overhung
the stillness of a river,
they played for me a sad song
which brought to mind a lover.
They nestled there, side by side
as loving birds are peaceful.
I watched with awesome pride
those birds with love so full.
Then startled by a noise they rose
and flew off through the forest.
I sit here now and just suppose
that they, like all the rest, find something to protest.
This peace which was injected
through my troubled heart today,
rested in its fervent bed
while waiting for a display.
Our leaders though so unkind,
usher in twelve months of hate.
And ev-er-y-one seems so purblind
except that male and his mate.
Now the silence of their absence
and love lessons we can learn,
unaware of our own presence,
and lust desires which we yearn.
Those two white birds were so alone
in their union and their bond,
they wanted people all to see
the rising of the sun, the coming of the dawn...
Dec 26, 2010
Dec 26, 2010 at 7:47 AM UTC
passing by the roadblocks
of those utterly devoid of inspiration
I grind my gears in frantic agony
through artless days and pastel nites
the last drops of forbidden nectar looms
far back on the parody of my tongue
and I asleep in the drivers seat...listening
to the horrid sound
my gear teeth clinched hard
to placate the need by the promise
of gold plated plastic ornamentation
fulfilling the impossible climb
the austere instigator of forgotten melodies
slides closed the gateway ahead
in clear violation of the unwritten laws
that govern all worthwhile endeavor
now those gates wreak of cynical deviance
nirvana open to all who seek to reach the peak
so far beyond impossibility ...wide open
by bane of fence.. no recompense for that gate
with my tongue overhung from morose overdose
in failed attempts of finding the trace
of even the most scant memory
now lies frozen in the throes
of twisted convolutions
while my nostrils fill with acrid smoke
as gear teeth commence to melt
suspended halfway up the impossible climb
I am pushing hard the acceleration
aided by the rigor mortis of my seizure
asleep at the wheel with all wheels grinding
while those below the uninspired guardians
stare up in unimpressed confusion
where fire and smoke screams of agony
as the dream possessed begins to melt
reaching critical mass of inevitability
caught between the high mark of false sanction
and a bottom of craggy rock distortion
like a monsters teeth and open maw
awaiting with patient disregard
at the wheel the visionary sleeps
amid symbolic ritualistic boundaries
od'D on the wreckless need
for heights not guaranteed
but out on the windswept plains
of wordless twists and rigid tongue
the flaming mass shudders to that
unrelenting silent rage of aberration
then begins the tumble to the patient maw
the message flashes through
the sudden adrenaline flooded brain cells
like the flashing signs of hiway construction
last message passing by
in bright flashing neon
tomorrow will bring inspired risktakers
who now know the starting pattern
because I can say I made it beyond
all odds where none before have gone
by passing the dreaded roadblocks
at the far end of human imagination.
I od"D on the wreckless need
for heights not guaranteed .
Mar 21, 2017
Mar 21, 2017 at 2:12 PM UTC
light scrunched, a crouched shadow.
eyes discern heaviness of
ordinary places into various flows
of gutted fish.
this world gives away a weathered image:
its wraith comes unannounced
lovelessly drags the stooping gait
of walls, obscenely expires
a small clearing
this mundane home gives way
to a restless flow of other dimensions.
bird of the afternoon
reaches far beyond extensions.
discombobulated tendril of light
flashes its fullness
to a bedrock of reality.
the kitchenwares start to falter
but all for the way, where once
gray hair graced this table,
her vividly tremulous hand steadies
a fixed touch on bedspread —
on the wet back of freshly bathed fruits,
a metonymy that continues to bruise.
morning's watery hands part to meet
the mist of departures;
quietly as we all are, seldom imposed
an overhung dark, and as quiet as you,
do not go.
Dec 6, 2015
Dec 6, 2015 at 10:41 PM UTC
I remember the dark room
And me,
A singular broken thing.
My tears perennial
Coursed the ground in all directions;
As the sky of my body shook
Quivering in the precipitation
Of all identities lost.
I remember the dark room
And me,
Lost and disgusted with the self
That could evoke
Such supreme loathing from a being
Who was the altar
To all the love my heart could outpour.
I remember the dark room
Like a cage with a dying bird.
And me,
The dying blind bird
Whom the moon refused to shelter.
It was a carnage of bullets,
A rain of misgiving pellets
Against the visage of my mind.
Mutilated in agony,
I stooped lower
Hoping the ground would offer
What the moon had refused to surrender.
Inside that dark room,
It rained like acid
From the hollow of his mouth
Down to the narrow tunnel of my ears.
The salty bitterness of tears
Was the most sensible, recognizable feeling
That my tongue remembers.
I remember the dark room,
Where he made his dark love to me
Crushing me under the pressure
Of his bulldozing affair.
His venomous tentacles searched insatiably inside
My insides
Only to find nothing…
After all,
The salinity of the tongue,
Was as infertile as the salinity of the soil.
My lungs wanted to abscond my body,
And while fleeing
Spit onto him
The warm blood
Desperate to break
Into the pitch black order of the dark room
Between our legs
In rebellious hues of reds.
Before I could count further revolutions
Of the motionless ceiling fan
He had had enough of his regular persecutions.
It was over.
Crystals of sweat
Overhung over his
Serpentine back.
And in the dark room with the dusty cage
There glistened
A million shards of human debris.
Feb 21, 2018
Feb 21, 2018 at 1:42 AM UTC
days passed by like a minute long
the kid became a grown, and still can't get along
his head was filled with hatred when he was young
grown up to see a world where he doesn't belong
everyone is an enemy if they do not speak his tongue
to a piece of paper he has worshiped and clung
praised a killer whom with a sword has swung, over the heads of Civilians who were overhung
was taught not to think, so to the reason he tried to slung
was told not to say what is in heart, kept the words under his tongue
he always knew it was all wrong, but doesn't want them to be unstrung
-
next step, used to hear but not to perform
used to feel the lie even in its best form
used to see the elders but not to inform
nor even to adapt nor to find the conform
time by time knew that his mind was in a deform
however his mind still suffering from them worms
and only 'the reason' was the way to reform
but can't to the society nor to himself transform
nowhere to hide from the freeze...nowhere is warm
death was the only one way to leave the swarm
Jan 26, 2019
Jan 26, 2019 at 4:02 AM UTC
If it was always this way,
always the night and never
to set foot in the shadow
at noon,
always on time, but never too
soon and the skin on cold coffee
as wrinkled as I,
I might as well as a shell on the
shore wonder and wonder if there
could be something more
than this.
Listen to me,
and I sound of a sound far
out in the sea
where the echo gets lost in the
waves.
It probably is all relative,
to each and the home.
But the sadness of something
that I never had or knew
sweeps in with the daybreak and
It's this
that makes me blue.
So I walk light on the snow and
try not to damage the flakes,
impossible really, but they say
it takes all sorts and out of sorts,
out of step, sinking below where the depths of my imagination
are overhung by the hanging ivy of my ego to see where I go.
I know a little of little and count when the evening flickers a large flock of sheep, sleep eludes me.
I leave it like this, but so glad she remembered to kiss me on the way out.
Jan 30, 2016
Jan 30, 2016 at 12:57 PM UTC
There should be a word,
for when you read poetry,
or when you write it,
and the feeling that follows,
or leads.
Sadness tinged with longing,
shot through with love,
trailing fatigue, and
overhung with a rawness of true
emotion,
I want a word for that.
Feb 3, 2019
Feb 3, 2019 at 10:49 AM UTC
Upon a will not of my own
My eyes lured westward
To the settling rustic clouds
Spread wide-winged across the sky
And from an open vortex came
The leader's shrill reply.
The ducks of Sabie braced the winds up high
Their wishbone flight kept in harmony
Ignited a compelling thrill
Deep within my half conscious eye
For yet again I listen into memory.
The days spent at Sabie might have gone by
But these alluring creatures pass here now
Stirring a hidden intimate thought
Which grew from Sabie's twilight river banks.
Where unattended grass abounds in profusion
The blades tall from country breath and
Wide pastures naked to the windy storms.
Against a reddening sun and a blackening bridge
Which overhung the ice-cold waters,
Those ducks bleated their melancholic cry
Like a marker for a question why.
Their passage seemed a continuous dream
Their throats resounding the restless stream
Sabie, a shelter to beautiful liberty
That reverberates against green clad mountains
Where heaven unites with a shy still spiritual grandeur
I watched the haunting waifs wander through the sky
Like a ghost refection against my sub-conscious mind.
A holier feeling, as a church spire lost in mists.
Of a rainy day, yearned within me.
Their swaying wings cast shadows in my heart
Their beauty and their vagabond souls
Provoke a thought of sublime content.
That evasive mood on which poets' conjure
A strength of divine sorrow and subdued delight.
While the river's rhythmic pulse beat over the rocks
And in the darkness seemed a sight of slithering glass
With the tall trees mirrored in its sun-stained depth
A subtle yearning reached within my soul.
An urge evolved to save this temporary while
And rest within this insulated haven
Where to hear the ducks invokes an embracing joy
To be a limb, a fringe, a relative of this deity-like company.
Present falls too soon on shallow ears
And the ducks of Sabie, might they be
Lose their reminiscent shadows to the dark horizon
May 31, 2018
May 31, 2018 at 6:28 PM UTC
as unsparing as glass hung to mirror is--
in the cold cast monologue of eyes,
the faces of years never purveyed
true reflection.
so there is no preparing to meet it
in another's eyes who see themselves,
as you see yourself for the first time.
whereupon the light of day clears its
space overhung with veils, exposing
those eyes.
momentarily struck dead by the force
of their essential seeing--what played
haunted host to the lighting of a
lifetime.
suddenly stares back--one sees one's
reflection, a shock only Love can absorb.
Aug 18, 2019
Aug 18, 2019 at 12:27 PM UTC
As I looked up,
under the night's blue overhung,
A moonlit hollow.
I could not know what the people were,
nor the things,
That grew within the garden walls.
But I was not saddened,
I was not cold,
Beyond a closed window's glow,
and hearing only the rustling
Of grass in the gutter.
Apr 27, 2020
Apr 27, 2020 at 6:39 PM UTC
straggling penances through
garden gates--rabid as raccoons
in blazes of daylight.
limply limning the resurrecting lights
that trail glories.
among lip-biting flowers, whose unsilenced
scents slip spring breezes through the
eyes of needles.
skied smooth as cloth overhung from a puff
of breath.
as there...Mother Mary taking entire care.
her hands following after more delicate than tears.
Apr 2, 2019
Apr 2, 2019 at 12:57 PM UTC