I’ve been flitting around this planet getting distracted by the smallest thing for long enough now to know i will never be a knuckle down and produce a world-shattering great work kind of writer. Poetry, flash fiction, Haiku etc take the thoughts, images, emotions and phrases bumping about in my brain and give me somewhere to put them, for better or worse.
We all have our triggers; visual, emotional, literary, landscape. Recently I have been enjoying responding to an assortment of people on Twitter who post writing prompts such as an image or a concept and reading the responses of other strangers who felt compelled to create. Egalitarian, refreshing and inspiring.
Some time ago I wrote a poem on this blog prompted by my excitement at receiving a print of a painting by Cornish artist Jo March (not she of Little Women fame). A lot of her work is a beautiful response to the rolling yet rugged, myth-filled Cornish landscape, fertil ewith secrets and history. You can see some of it here. https://www.jomarchart.com/2017gallery-block/
This poem was a response to some of that work and love, quest, myth and time are also twined in its lines.
Polly.
Rider
Through wet-silver’d lanes
arc’d over with green
deep as myth you rode
under flying moon and pale sun-
rinsed pure and meek
by the adolescent year’s flurries.
The dough-soft hills of your kingdom-
whispering land startled awake-
rolled away under thudding black hooves
driven on by your urgent legs.
But how you wished instead
you could ride astride raven or hawk
whose route would not be thwarted
by the twists in ancient lanes
or sudden bends in old ways;
but direct as a feather-tipped dart
taking you and your love to the waiting heart
of the flower-cheeked one you loved before
your days flowed apart
carrying dreams to unplanned shores.
But you, beloved, stare down the dark,
riding with fury against the push of Time,
That rolls boulders to pebbles which lie
silent in the endless wash of tides.
Advertisements Share this:
