The Darling Buds – Violet

there is always an uneasy truce

between

small black cats who

love flowers almost as much

as making closed doors open

and our larger dreams of rich blossoms

and unshattered pottery

watch

wait

black cats with patience

smokelike

emerging triumphant

curled behind the locked

door in a pot

of african violets

Violet – Watchfulness

Every May (and sometimes into June), I do a series of poems based on Victorian flower meanings. Welcome to the Darling Buds.

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For more watchfulness (or lack of watchfulness), my fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor, is available here. Its sequel, With Honor Intact, can be found here.

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The Darling Buds – Begonia

at the edge of sleep

the fine line of morning

blossoms unfurl gently

dreaming of the taste of summer

dreaming of the brush of snow

Begonia – A Fanciful Nature

Every May (and sometimes into June), I do a series of poems based on Victorian flower meanings. Welcome to the Darling Buds.

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For more flights of fancy, my fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor, is available here. Its sequel, With Honor Intact, can be found here.

The Darling Buds – Sunflower

At the edges of the mountains

the bones of old pulleys

graves of dead sluices

are piled underneath layers

of rockfall and regrowth

machinery of the gold-that-wasn’t

the people with fools’ dreams

left nothing of themselves

sometimes though

in the skeletons of old cabins

we children were never meant

to find

we would pull out old sunflower labels

from under the floorboards

the only gold that

any of us ever

found

Sunflower – False Riches

Every May, I do a series of poems based on Victorian flower meanings. Welcome to the Darling Buds.

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For more deceptive treasure, my fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor, is available here. Its sequel, With Honor Intact, can be found here.

The Darling Buds – Primrose

The burnt timbers of the basement

were overgrown with grass and

alder but still her garden remained

amidst the encroaching forest

that last piece of the tame world

she had left

of visions of tea and gentle

conversation a burst of

defiant colour of bold

order spreading in the shadow

of a chaos she had never

chosen

Primrose – Woman

Every May, I do a series of poems based on Victorian flower meanings. Welcome to the Darling Buds.

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For more women and persistence of women, my fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor, is available here. Its sequel, With Honor Intact, can be found here.

The Face of the Sun

We are blinded

sunstruck

our eyes only able

to see the brightest light

all else fading into

shadow

burned into silhouette

by our need to

gaze into

the face of the sun

We are drawn always to the brightest flame

One of our first lessons as children walking outside is to avoid looking into the light.

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For more light, dangerous and otherwise, my fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor, is available here. Its sequel, With Honor Intact, can be found here.

Reflections, Past and Present

The water carries the mountains

The streams carve out the arteries

the inevitable points of failure

but even in the valleys

those lakes that are not connected

hold the faces of the peaks

of the space between the heavens

and the place where the mountains

slept before they reached for a

higher more dangerous

blue

The water remembers when the mountains were below rather than above

The world has a long memory.

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For more memories, long or otherwise, The Guests of Honor, is available here. Its sequel, With Honor Intact, can be found here.

Garden, Gated

The right kind of gate

is not a barrier but a

transformation

it exists to say that

nothing beyond this place

this step that is taken

will ever be the same

We offer the glimpse of magic; the next step is yours.

There is something about the teasing marriage of greenery and fencing that is made for magic and adventure. Thus also ends Alliteration Month! I hope that you enjoyed the title fun.

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For more stories of magical gates and transformative steps, The Guests of Honor, is available here. Its sequel, With Honor Intact, can be found here.

Securing Sunshine

In the oldest forests

a thousand seedlings die

in darkness

When one of the giants falls

there is an explosion

of green things

desperate youth

In these spaces everything

reaches upwards a thousand

faces searching for

light

We all need space to grow

Transitions are both painful and beautiful.

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For more stories of light and transition, The Guests of Honor, is available here. Its sequel, With Honor Intact, can be found here.

Water Wound

in a land where water

disappears

ponds draw all threads

together

every plant large and small carefully

woven

without regard for their

differences

in a desperate dance of

survival

There are few tapestries as richly varied as the edges of ponds

In the wildlands, water both draws and binds.

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For more tales of water, my fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor, is available here. Its sequel, With Honor Intact, can be found here.

Forest Faces

As a small child

I saw faces everywhere

weeping women in the curve of the river

old men in the shadow of twisted bark

As I grew older

there were monsters as well as people

watching carefully for me to stumble

The forest still greets me

with a thousand faces

but I am person

and monster enough

to love them all

What we see is always our own mirror

Even in a landscape devoid of people, we still bring ourselves with us.

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For more faces of the human and inhuman, my fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor, is available here. Its sequel, With Honor Intact, can be found here.