"watercourse" poems
You can see it already: chalks and ochers;
Country crossed with a thousand furrow-lines;
Ground-level rooftops hidden by the shrubbery;
Sporadic haystacks standing on the grass;
Smoky old rooftops tarnishing the landscape;
A river (not Cayster or Ganges, though:
A feeble Norman salt-infested watercourse);
On the right, to the north, bizarre terrain
All angular--you'd think a shovel did it.
So that's the foreground. An old chapel adds
Its antique spire, and gathers alongside it
A few gnarled elms with grumpy silhouettes;
Seemingly tired of all the frisky breezes,
They carp at every gust that stirs them up.
At one side of my house a big wheelbarrow
Is rusting; and before me lies the vast
Horizon, all its notches filled with ocean blue;
***** and hens spread their gildings, and converse
Beneath my window; and the rooftop attics,
Now and then, toss me songs in dialect.
In my lane dwells a patriarchal rope-maker;
The old man makes his wheel run loud, and goes
Retrograde, hemp wreathed tightly round the midriff.
I like these waters where the wild gale scuds;
All day the country tempts me to go strolling;
The little village urchins, book in hand,
Envy me, at the schoolmaster's (my lodging),
As a big schoolboy sneaking a day off.
The air is pure, the sky smiles; there's a constant
Soft noise of children spelling things aloud.
The waters flow; a linnet flies; and I say: "Thank you!
Thank you, Almighty God!"--So, then, I live:
Peacefully, hour by hour, with little fuss, I shed
My days, and think of you, my lady fair!
I hear the children chattering; and I see, at times,
Sailing across the high seas in its pride,
Over the gables of the tranquil village,
Some winged ship which is traveling far away,
Flying across the ocean, hounded by all the winds.
Lately it slept in port beside the quay.
Nothing has kept it from the jealous sea-surge:
No tears of relatives, nor fears of wives,
Nor reefs dimly reflected in the waters,
Nor importunity of sinister birds.
4.4k
She loves him in the way morning air keeps her eyes open
In the way white daisies dancing through the wind
In the way salt water dancing in her hair
Or white sand that breathing under her feet
She loves him in the way fresh berries picked up at 5 am in the morning
Newspaper melted in one hand, chocolate melted in her tongue
And there's a cup of hot tea with smoke billowing
When sun shining bright on the summer morning
And birds keep singing
She loves him in the way tropical jungle that grows in her veins
Wild yellow honeysuckle that keeps her imagination alive
Or a field full of red poppies that blooms in her chest
And a watercourse that flood through her blood
She loves him in the way old songs that keeps her memories walk behind
Or sounds of blue waves that running in her mind
Smells of old library and fragile papers that makes her remind
Of the way sunflowers kissing the sun, smiling to the blue sky
And shooting stars falling down on a dark night
She loves him in the way butterflies bottled in her stomach
While cold night air whispers her name too much
When pale moon light burns the whole city
Ended with condensed vapor that ride into her nasal cavity
But she doesn't love him in the way red roses blossoms in her heart
Thorn of the red roses makes her lung hurt
Because
He doesn't love her back
He never does
That's the truth.
Dec 20, 2013
Dec 20, 2013 at 9:37 PM UTC
He put a flint to the lantern once
They’d walked across the crest,
Were lost in a group of headstones that
Lay hidden from the rest,
And down in a slight depression he
Lit up a certain tomb,
Where the name of Elspeth Trelawney
Was reflected in the gloom.
Trelawney held up the lantern high
While Corby held the *****
And Gordon Bracks with an old pick-axe
Stood back, he was afraid.
‘I fear the spirits are out tonight
In this graveyard of the ******
‘Get on, and turn up the sod,’ he said,
Trelawney forced his hand.
The Squire was quiet and ashen-faced
As the two had bent their backs,
Corby tipping the earth aside
Then standing aside for Bracks,
‘The earth is solid, it’s packed right down,
We need to pick it loose,’
‘Just do whatever you have to do,
There’s little time to lose!’
The Squire had buried his Elspeth back
In eighteen twenty-four,
For seven years he had held his grief
But he couldn’t take much more,
‘I have to see her again,’ he said,
To kiss her pale, dead lips,
To stroke the hair on my darling’s head
And caress her fingertips.’
She’d taken the coach and four one day
Way out in the countryside,
The coachman, used to a horse and dray,
Had begun to speed the ride,
He whipped the horses and lost the reins
As the coach began to slide,
Tipped the coach in the watercourse
Where Elspeth drowned and died.
He hadn’t looked at his lover’s face
Before she was interred,
But tried to avoid the loss of grace
In her face that was inferred.
‘I only want to remember her
As she was in the flush of life,
Not in the throes of death,’ he’d said
When talking about his wife.
They’d rushed to hurry the burial,
On the day that she was found,
Popped her into a coffin, then,
Planted her in the ground,
Trelawney later had agonised
That he hadn’t let her lie,
‘I couldn’t bear her to be around,’
He said, with a tearful eye.
But now he wanted to see her face,
They lifted the coffin lid,
While Gordon Bracks had turned his back
To see what Trelawney did,
The horror showed on the Squire’s face
As he gazed into her eyes,
For Elspeth lay in a bleak dismay
As her fate was realized.
Her hands were raised and they looked like claws
They’d scratched at the coffin lid,
The clumps of hair she had torn right out
Was the final thing she did,
And on the lid she had scratched his name
In the torment of the ******
‘Trelawney, may you be cursed by God!’
She’d scratched, with her dying hand.
David Lewis Paget
Jan 14, 2014
Jan 14, 2014 at 7:41 PM UTC
Somewhere at the watercourse-
Silvery brume.
Shining through, like pulsing light-
Golden iris are in bloom.
Tongues of brazen flame-
Snap their reflection against the lukewarm mirror-
This is where order looms.
Felicity-
Serenity-
Vestigial depression.
Second guesses-
Underwhelming quests in wrong directions.
Oh elixir. Oh watercourse-
Oh inanimate eloquence.
How you tempt me with your evocative consonance.
You remind me of a woman-
Her husband and her son-
To me you are a drifter-
You remind me of the sun-
You remind me of a king-
of a man with sore eyes-
Mourning late son.
In the mornings sun rise.
Watercourse watercourse-
Lazy eyed shadow.
Left handed perfectionist-
Seething pale shallow.
Watercourse watercourse-
Your body feeds the worms.
Your souls seams have torn.
Watercourse watercourse.
May 20, 2014
May 20, 2014 at 8:20 PM UTC
Snow cone twists
Far ivory countryside
Season’s change exists
A stern mother nature’s pride
Foothills that resemble cream pies
Coating pointy flakes a mile high
Birds take cover
To find a feathery mother
Try to resist nature’s feverish fight
And hide from the silvery night
Moon beams its pearly opals
Thru rainbow colored window chapels
In the nest
Little birds try their best
Huddled up
Till daybreak
They might delight
In the white sparkle sunlight
Snowy course
A bitter adventure for the strong farmhorse
Powder puff
It kicks it up like dust
Spring a strong sense
With snow that is no longer dense
Temperatures waver
An ice storm disfavor
Crystal drops
From frozen tree tops
The chirps begin
With a little more earthly spin
Melting snow
Begins to flow
Moving water a strong force
Becomes quite the
Snowy watercourse
Sep 10, 2018
Sep 10, 2018 at 8:20 PM UTC
At midnight, out on the cobblestones
There’s the sound of rolling wheels,
And a shadow cast on a window pane
From the road outside, it steals,
A wagon, black in its livery,
And pulled by a single horse,
As black as the heart of the man that steers,
Whipped up from the watercourse.
From down in a tiny inlet, deep
Enough for a man of war,
A French corvette is lying, waiting,
Just metres away from shore,
It carried a cargo of brandy, wine,
And cases full of tea,
Smuggled into the tiny cove
Its goods all duty free.
Now it’s waiting upon the tide
To turn the ship around,
Its cargo gone in the wagon now,
Headed for higher ground,
And then the galloping hoofbeats echo
Over the cobblestones,
The crack of a couple of pistols and
The air is filled with groans.
The horse breaks free of its halter and
The wagon rolls back down,
It’s shadow passing my window pane
A second time around,
It rolls back into the harbour while
I hear the boom of guns,
Firing from the French Corvette
As it hoists its sail, and runs.
Once a year on the fifth of June
And late into the night,
Whenever the moon is lying low
And casting down its light,
I see the shadows and hear the sounds
From that deadly time of yore,
As the ghostly French Corvette departs
And sails from the ghostly shore.
And glistening out on the cobblestones
There’s a dampness, looks like mud,
That dissipates in an hour or two,
A pool of the smuggler’s blood,
I dare not go to the window, look,
Or even open the door,
In case I’m carried away by them
From two hundred years before.
David Lewis Paget
Dec 7, 2017
Dec 7, 2017 at 1:51 AM UTC
There we were at the beginning of the world
A forest
redwood
bay laurel
A watercourse chiseled
into the limestone of that ridge
opening outward
to the west and setting sun
We were almost under water
through miles, through layers of green
We sat together
listening
as the alto recorder in my hand
played on its own!
A tune that called
a mahogany-voiced bird
to harmonize
A tune
that gentled the sun into the sea.
A tune
that wove together
every instant
of the days we had yet to live
May 1, 2016
May 1, 2016 at 10:47 PM UTC
The clock is endlessly ticking away its mournful song of the past
Second by second, droplets of years ago stream down the watercourse of time
They race by so hastily, not even the human eye can catch a memory that is enclosed in each droplet.
For years, too many years, I have been granted to hold on to a few of these faint droplets.
The foolish say there are always more droplets that will come
Either from the blinding blue sky that cries from delight
Or from the shadows of it that come at night.
But to me, no other droplet can replace them.
Though the memory is weak, and the droplets are slowly leaking away through the cracks of my small fragile hands
I fight; I fight with every pound of my heart to keep them alive.
Though I have lost many battles, and much of my own blood to keep them hidden and alive, I know my waiting will pay off
For these droplets of a distant memory, will someday be given back to the one who created it....
I don’t know for how much longer these droplets will last, but thy one who thought they have already escaped my life 10 years ago….
I am waiting for you....
~ Cat's Shadow ///
Jul 20, 2017
Jul 20, 2017 at 8:07 AM UTC
‘Be waiting up at the window,’ said
The note he sent by hand,
‘I’ll come and collect you at midnight,’
Said the note, ‘the way we planned.’
She heard the clatter of hoofbeats in
The courtyard down below,
And waved to him from the window
As she seized her portmanteau.
She quickly skipped down the staircase
Holding both her shoes in hand,
Trying to avoid the clatter as
She raced down to her man,
It only took but a moment then
To seat her on his horse,
And gallop out of the courtyard on
Their way to the watercourse.
A light appeared in an upper room
And they heard her father roar,
‘By God, you’ll pay for your insolence,
I told you once before.’
He’d promised her to a Banker’s clerk
Who had paid him for her hand,
Though she had said that it wouldn’t work,
She had bowed to his command.
But then the couple had plotted,
He was sworn to break her free,
‘If anyone is to marry, it
Will just be you to me.’
They headed down to the water where
The sloop, ‘The Esperance’,
Was waiting for their arrival
Before sailing off to France.
It took an hour to set the sails
And wait for the tide to turn,
They hid themselves below the deck
In a cabin at the stern,
But soon the thunder of hoofbeats said
They must have been found out,
For then they heard her father’s call,
‘It’s best that you come out,’
He ventured slowly out on the deck
To reason with the man,
Then saw the flash of the powder that
Was loaded in the pan,
The ball cut straight through his windpipe,
Left him sprawling on the deck,
While she was dragged from below, and screamed
‘All curses on your neck.’
He locked her into an attic room
And he wouldn’t let her out,
Though she would wail, and would scream at him,
And curse and yell, and shout,
She waited up till the early hours
Then she set her room alight,
The fire spread till they all were dead
From that single candlelight.
It sits as a blackened ruin now
With soot on the standing walls,
A testament to a daughter who
Refused to be overruled,
And still some nights when the moon is bright
There’s a whisper, close at hand,
‘I’ll come and collect you at midnight,
And we’ll leave, the way we planned.’
David Lewis Paget
Dec 7, 2017
Dec 7, 2017 at 8:38 PM UTC
My father told us the story of
The time of his greatest pain,
Back in the year of ninety-nine,
During Victoria’s reign,
He lived in a two-bed terrace,
With a brother and sisters two,
With gas lamps out in the cobbled street
And nothing you’d call a view.
‘The windows were of a pebble glass
That distorted all you’d see,
And when it rained and the clouds were grained
All these shades appeared to me,
The lamps would cast a flickering beam
On the movement in the street,
To paint in shadows the local scene
Of that place they called ‘The Fleet’.’
‘I thought these shadows were passing ghosts
Who had died and lost their way,
Their shadows, caught in the pouring rain
Coming back and forth all day,
I little knew that my brother too
Would be claimed before too long,
Would add his tiny, flickering soul
To the heart of that heaving throng.’
‘For down below, a river would flow
Underneath the Coach and Horse,
The mighty sewers of the Fleet
Followed that watercourse,
The entrances were underground
And the water in it foul,
But floating bodies were often found
And the sewer men would howl.’
‘And Toby, our little Toby, he
Would be sent along the street,
He’d clatter along the cobblestones
For a loaf of bread, a treat,
He’d fetch a plug of tobacco for
Our father’s pipe, of course,
Collecting it from the barman there,
Down at the Coach and Horse.’
‘He’d toddle away, in light or dark,
He’d go in the sun or rain,
Whatever my father asked him do
He saw no need to explain,
And Toby went in the drizzling rain
One day, for a quart of beer,
I watched for him through the pebble glass
But the lad quite disappeared.’
‘All I could see were the moving shapes
Of the shadows in the rain,
Of ghosts, all huddled in coats and capes
As they passed my way, again,
But never a sight of our Toby, nor
The quart of my father’s beer,
We sent out a searching party, but
He wasn’t to reappear.’
‘We got in touch with the sewer men
Who said they would search the Fleet,
And try to find him before he flowed
To the Thames on New Bridge Street,
But all they found were a dozen dogs
Along with a monster pig,
Who all had drowned before they were found
And Toby was half as big.’
‘My father stood at the open door
At the same time every day,
Come rain or shine, he couldn’t divine
Why Toby had gone away,
But I can see, as if in a fit,
A thing that should count the least,
My father’s pipe, forever unlit,
Still gracing the mantelpiece.’
David Lewis Paget
Dec 29, 2015
Dec 29, 2015 at 2:42 AM UTC
limpid watercourse
bird's melody
soft wind in the trees
the light side of the moon
your mind, your body, you
insanely beautiful
the way you move your hands
reminds me of the time
we were free
Apr 25, 2022
Apr 25, 2022 at 7:48 PM UTC
Why do I have to feel?
Feeling brings pain.
Heartache pounds within the cage of my chest.
Feeling brings confusion.
What should be a clear reflection looks more like
The cloudy mirror after a hot shower.
Feeling is an ache in my bones
Worse than the dew soaked English morning.
Feelings reach for the stars
Only to be an abrasion
Like falling off my bicycle
Feeling is the road rash of the soul.
Nails along the chalkboard
Screeching loudly enough to cringe
Harpy feelings take vampire bites
Draining life from heart and soul.
Here I sit in the dark of night
'Neath the sullen icy gaze of Luna
Contemplating the ravages of...
What I feel
Yet feel I will,
Indeed feel I must...
Inescapably ensnared by emotional ties,
situations and other connections
Sometimes not even breaking the surface
The overwhelming watercourse
Of feelings ...
Impossible to stem
Can't even put a finger in the ****
to slow the torrent at times.
Often, I don't even want to stop the flow,
even when that would be the sane thing to do.
Jul 15, 2019
Jul 15, 2019 at 2:45 AM UTC