Current mood: tired

I started this months before finishing it. Long gaps when writing remind me of the danger of letting things sit - especially poetry. It’s helpful to get some distance from the work, but situations and even people change amazingly quickly. It’s hard to judge how long is too long.. My upcoming birthday is  depressing and things kept wanting to go that way, but mortality wasn’t originally a theme in the first stanza - I was just trying to make it pretty.

It might help for short works to take detailed notes on one’s state of mind before starting and then only write when in similar moods, but this would limit the range of anything longer. Ack it’s way past time to sleep..

I’ve gazed along the open road
in early morning silence,
when the ground is lit with a heady glow
and the light is clear and constant;
a milky film of night-air clings
to the silver olive leaves
and the silver sun skims the sandy ground
and throws light in drops off the trees.

I’ve gazed along the open road
in staid light fast abating,
when the sky is great with gold decay
and the sun is spent and setting;
a rich bouquet of shared-life hangs
with black and heavy fruit
till fruit and branches drop with the day
and all that’s quick falls cold and mute.

Current mood: calm

There is a sweet and solemn place
away up in the canyon
along the ridge’s southern face
where the redroot’s blooming.
The air is hot and hazy thick
with the smell of summer,
the grass is ripe and sweet to pick
in gold and green and amber.
The insects murmer high and light
a humming and a popping
the sky is lit up low and bright
and peace is gently falling.

The morning sweat and rising breath
of oceans, rivers, lakes,
is drawn and packed against
the upper edge of air and space.
The sky bends under compounded
weight of wind and cloud;
the atmosphere beneath,
compressed and buckling, cracks,
crazing up the middle,
hot from the folding,
light showing through the back.

Again from creative writting

Found this half done in a notebook. Often when I come back to things they seem mehh but this was ok. The danger in waiting to finish is that style inevitably changes - it’s pretty obvious which stanzas are new. Distance is good, but not too much..

She sits across from me wild and unbroken,
hair wandering, eyes lit up by coffee fumes -
the high features of her face, the force of life
that uncurls from her shoulder and animates
fine ligaments as she reaches for a napkin
call to mind old romantic poetry in which the victim
is subject to all manner of unlikely metaphor, but,

My love is like an untamed bird
that sits in open hand -
her talk is singing, if she sang
to me I could not stand it.
Such things were meant not for mere men
but rather kings and lords
who sat in ancient times enthroned,
rich raiment draped like skirts of snow
round thickset hills of shoulders,
iron necks, proud heads turned slow.
Their crown was justice, might their sceptre,
From their lips flowed truth and beauty,
On their tounges were verse and laughter.
In their cages dwelt such birds;
when their strong hearts were galled
from bearing beast and sinful man,
then for the bird they’d call;

And notes as clear as moonlight rang,
bright peaks and dewy threads of song
light-shuttled through the air,
until the violent crowd grew quiet;
until all else fell silent.